Social prescribing: Reclaiming the heart of community-rooted family medicine

In family medicine, we spend our days navigating the space between what is in our toolbox and what patients truly need to be well. So often those needs stretch far beyond what we traditionally consider to be part of the health care system. During a Family Medicine Matters¹ podcast conversation with Dr Gary Bloch, a family physician at St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, and a longtime leader in health equity, we explored a deceptively simple idea that is reshaping primary care across Canada: social prescribing.

At its core, social prescribing is the practice of connecting patients who have social needs to community-based resources.² It began in the United Kingdom and gained momentum when that country’s National Health Service implemented it nationally in 2019,³ but its roots feel familiar to Canadian family medicine. As Bloch reminded us, this is not about adding something new so much as rediscovering what we have always done, that is, seeing the whole person, understanding their context, and recognizing that health is shaped long before patients arrive in our clinics.

What distinguishes the Canadian context is that it strengthens both individuals and communities, Bloch explained. By matching deep understanding of who someone is with deep understanding of community context, an approach emerges that not only addresses an individual’s social needs, but also strengthens communities. Where Bloch’s team works, this approach takes the form of 2 community “link workers” who connect people with existing social supports. The work is unhurried and deeply relational: visits in people’s homes, building lobbies, or over coffee. Link workers begin simply by listening to a person’s story. From there, they connect people with resources, hobbies, and supports.

It was striking to hear how wide-ranging these social prescriptions can be. Sometimes they involve helping to access income supports or housing services. Other times, the prescription might be rejoining a knitting group or returning to a long-abandoned hobby. The common thread is not the nature of the activity, but the process centred on trust, grounded in dignity, and shaped by what matters most to the patient.

Evaluating this kind of work is challenging. Although there are no laboratory test results or blood pressure targets to track, data on the impact of social prescribing have been published.⁴ For Bloch’s team, qualitative tools like the Photovoice storytelling method⁵ also reveal its impact. As social prescribing grows across Canada, there is an opportunity to define a distinctly Canadian model that honours community expertise; acknowledges inequities shaped by colonialism, racism, poverty, and social exclusion; and values the work family physicians already do every day: noticing, connecting, advocating, accompanying.

Family physicians cannot solve the problems of poverty, unaffordable housing, or social isolation alone. But we can be catalysts that help people navigate systems and connect them to networks that sustain health. In a moment when our profession feels stretched, social prescribing is a reminder our greatest strength lies in the relationships we build.

Notes

Scan to listen to the Family Medicine Matters podcast

• Copyright © 2026 the College of Family Physicians of Canada