SHN4023 Social Influences On Health And Wellbeing Assignment Sample

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Introduction to Social Influences On Health And Well-being Assignment

• Health inequality persists as a significant societal issue because it disproportionately affects minority populations.
• Access restrictions created by the health system prevent some communities from reaching quality healthcare while producing marked differences in health results.
• Social determinants such as economic status, education, and structural discrimination lead to multiple health inequalities.

Social prescribing is a healthcare model enabling medical professionals to recommend community-based non-clinical services to their patients. Through social prescribing, medical providers offer patient referrals to local community activities, support groups, physical activities, and mental health services to enhance general health outcomes. This research examines how social prescribing promotes health equity by analysing one key structural disadvantage, while also drawing on insights commonly discussed in Online Assignment Help UK resources. A review of community intervention methods that support vulnerable groups will be undertaken, and the issue will be examined from a sociological perspective to understand its broader impact on health inequalities.

SHN4023 Social Influences On Health And Wellbeing Assignment Sample

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Louise Adams 6 Years | MSc

Social Prescribing

• Social prescribing represents a progressive healthcare model that links patients to non-clinical services to boost their health (Aughterson, 2022).
• Social prescribing changes medical attention from medications toward community-oriented solutions because it understands how environmental factors with social elements shape wellness outcomes.
• Patients receive medical prescriptions from healthcare professionals who direct them to suitable social, emotional, and practical support programs that address their specific needs.

A healthcare professional, including a GP nurse or social worker, begins social prescribing by recognizing patients facing non-medical health challenges. The patient often faces four main kinds of difficulties: feelings of loneliness together with mental health issues, financial problems and destructive lifestyle patterns. Healthcare professionals refer patients to link workers or community navigators who match them with proper local resources and activities after identification. Local resources offered by a social prescribing span from physical exercise programs to mental wellness assistance, including counselling and mindfulness sessions. The health service offers access to social programs and voluntary work but also provides housing support, employment guidance, and nutritional class participation.

• The current medical system fails to recognize how social circumstances influence the health outcomes of patients (Berger & Miller, 2021).
• Social prescribing identifies fundamental life factors which lead to long-lasting solutions rather than brief medical treatments.
• Patient involvement in social prescribing leads to better mental and physical health, resulting in lower medication usage, fewer GP visits, and more substantial social inclusion and connection.

The NHS Long-Term Plan serves as a documented illustration of social prescribing implementation in the United Kingdom. The program incorporates social prescribing programs to address patients' needs for coping with loneliness, mental health problems, and lifestyle diseases. Structured social prescription programs referred patients with chronic illnesses and mental health concerns to experience both diminished hospital stays and enhanced patient wellness measurements.

Social Prescribing & Community

• To achieve the best results from social prescribing programs, the initiative needs full-scale integration within the local community network (Adam Pattison Rathbone et al., 2024).
• Health challenges that arise from inequality affect patients because individual medical conditions alone do not explain their complete origin.
• Social prescribing initiatives require community involvement to enable their accessibility and sustainability and achieve meaningful impact.

Social networks in communities perform crucial functions that improve community members' health results. People gain tailored support benefiting their physical and mental wellness by implementing social prescribing methods in their community networks. Social prescribing programs receive vital support from local services, voluntary organisations, and community-based groups. Social prescriptions link patients with organizations ranging from cultural programs to peer-based assistance groups, religious institutions, non-profit organizations, and recreational activities. These different entities work collectively to fight social isolation while enhancing mental health outcomes and removing healthcare hurdles faced by patients.

Healthy Living Hubs represent social prescribing in action throughout UK communities. Multiple health services, including mental health workshops, financial advice, exercise classes, and employment assistance, are available through community-based centres. These healthcare providers work with these hubs to give people appropriate help when needed while solving health inequality problems that impact minority populations.

Solutions for Social Injustice & Social Prescribing

• Social injustice within healthcare presents itself through three main channels, which include unsymmetrical healthcare service accessibility uneven health results and systemic obstacles which especially impact vulnerable communities (Phuoc, 2024).
• Social strata, discriminatory practices and social exclusion alongside inadequate health literacy act as leading causes of these health inequalities.
• The key solution against social injustice in healthcare depends on making non-medical support services more accessible to patients.

The health problems that people face primarily result from the basic social factors, including unstable housing situations, joblessness, and social isolation. Through social prescribing, healthcare professionals direct clients toward community-based programs that target the patients' fundamental issues.

• Community members require empowerment through direct health leadership to manage their well-being needs (Shanafelt et al., 2020).
• Traditional healthcare delivery frameworks use an undemocratic procedure that makes patients serve as passive recipients of medical services.
• Social prescribing promotes active involvement by letting people participate in community-based programs.

People gain tools to strengthen their health while developing resilience through programs offering support groups, volunteering possibilities, and skill-building workshops that decrease medical dependency.

• Health inequalities require reduction through policy modifications and funded social prescribing programs to make the approach effective (SANDHU et al., 2022).
• Healthcare systems and governments must establish financial support for social prescribing programs since they deliver significant benefits to medical care.
• The accessibility of social prescribing for patients who need it depends on funding that supports link workers and community health programs in collaboration with healthcare providers and local organizations.

Social prescribing has been integrated into the National Health Service (NHS) of the UK as part of its sustained healthcare plan to bridge treatment disparities for underserved populations.

Sociological Theory Perspective

• Marxist Theory is one of the most vital sociological frameworks to explain health inequalities (Øversveen & Kelly, 2022).
• The theory maintains economic stratification and social class structure fundamentally control healthcare availability and other material resources for people.
• Under Marxist doctrine, capitalist nations value financial gain above human welfare and wealthier populations obtain superior medical care

Due to social prescribing, this theory demonstrates that communities need locally developed solutions to fight economic inequalities by delivering needed help to disadvantaged groups. Hospital systems that provide discounted or no-fee social prescriptions, including mental health care with exercise programs and financial guidance, decrease health disparities based on social class.

• The feminist perspective brings forth essential insights which examine how health gaps between men and women influence healthcare distribution (Eger et al., 2024).
• Women from minority communities face complications in healthcare service access and disruptive wage patterns, which prevent medical costs and experience sexual bias throughout medical research protocols and analysis stages.
• Social Constructionism selects a different theoretical standpoint by analyzing how community-established social ordinary ideals and public understandings affect health disparity outcomes.

According to this theory, social ideas about normality and acceptability emerge from human interactions without being absolute facts. People view disabilities as negative because the way society constructs itself leads to barriers that limit disabled persons.

Functionalism serves as another relevant theory because it investigates the ways social elements connect as they work to preserve harmony. Highly functional hospitals serve as fundamental social establishments that sustain societal harmony.

Connecting Theory to Real Life (Case Study)

• Through the Rotherham Social Prescribing Pilot, the NHS operates a social prescribing program that partners with local voluntary organizations to deliver services.
• The program served patients with chronic health problems, with additional attention paid to people experiencing social isolation because of economic troubles and mental health difficulties (Barnett et al., 2022).
• The program targeted patients by providing them access to non-medical support groups, including physical activities and mental health programs, to enhance their general health status.

A 65-year-old woman with major depression plus social isolation visited her GP at frequent intervals because of her anxiety symptoms. Her doctor prescribed typical medication as a treatment, but the outcomes were unsatisfactory. Social prescription linked her to community gardening activities and local women's support groups, which helped her develop relationships and a sense of objectivity. During six months her attendance at the General Practitioner decreased by 30% while she noted substantial advancements in mental health quality and life satisfaction.

• According to Marxist principles, poor health outcomes affect disadvantaged people since they commonly lack the resources needed to enhance their well-being (Efird et al., 2024).
• Social prescribing fills the existing healthcare gap by providing economical access to community resources for patients.
• The collective approach of health service providers, voluntary groups, and local public authorities functions through Functionalism to safeguard social equilibrium and promote better health outcomes.

Social support programs under the Critical Race Theory focus on minority patients eligible for healthcare due to systemic barriers because they provide language translation together with culture-based mental healthcare.

Conclusion

• Social prescribing develops a revolutionary healthcare model which connects medical institutions with community resources to handle health-related social factors.
• Social prescribing creates comprehensive health inequality solutions through non-clinical supports, including mental health groups, physical activities and financial counselling.
• The Rotherham Social Prescribing Pilot illustrated significant benefits from these interventions, which showed unique value for people who experience social isolation, economic struggles and mental health difficulties.

Healthcare accessibility for low-income people becomes restricted because of economic barriers, according to Marxist Theory, but Functionalist Theory promotes essential cooperation between health providers and community groups. Social prescribing through CRT and Feminist Theory demonstrates specific ways to benefit minority communities and discriminated women within the structures of their society.

References

• Adam Pattison Rathbone, Pearson, H., Akinyemi, O., Cartwright, N., Tierney, S., Rowlands, G., & Lindsey, L. (2024). “You don’t get side effects from social prescribing”—A qualitative study exploring community pharmacists’ attitudes to social prescribing. PloS One, 19(5), e0301076–e0301076. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301076
• Aughterson, H. (2022, August 28). Social prescribing for mental health and well-being: mechanisms of action, active ingredients, and barriers & enablers to effective engagement. Discovery.ucl.ac.uk. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10154892/
• Barnett, P., Steare, T., Dedat, Z., Pilling, S., McCrone, P., Knapp, M., Cooke, E., Lamirel, D., Dawson, S., Goldblatt, P., Hatch, S., Henderson, C., Jenkins, R., K, T., Machin, K., Simpson, A., Shah, P., Stevens, M., Webber, M., & Johnson, S. (2022). Interventions to improve social circumstances of people with mental health conditions: a rapid evidence synthesis. BMC Psychiatry, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-03864-9
• Berger, J. T., & Miller, D. R. (2021). Health Disparities, Systemic Racism, and Failures of Cultural Competence. The American Journal of Bioethics, 21(9), 4–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2021.1915411
• Efird, C. R., Wilkins, C. L., & H. Shellae Versey. (2024). Whiteness hurts society: How whiteness shapes mental, physical, and social health outcomes. Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12598
• Eger, H., Chacko, S., Salma El-Gamal, Gerlinger, T., Kaasch, A., Meudec, M., Munshi, S., Awa Naghipour, Rhule, E., Yatirajula Kanaka Sandhya, & Oriana López Uribe. (2024). Towards a Feminist Global Health Policy: Power, intersectionality, and transformation. PLOS Global Public Health, 4(3), e0002959–e0002959. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0002959
• Øversveen, E., & Kelly, C. A. (2022). Alienation: A useful concept for health inequality research. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 50(7), 140349482210853. https://doi.org/10.1177/14034948221085394
• Phuoc, T. (2024). Social Justice and Equity Issues of Air Pollution. the Handbook of Environmental Chemistry. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2024_1108
• SANDHU, S., ALDERWICK, H., & GOTTLIEB, L. M. (2022). Financing Approaches to Social Prescribing Programs in England and the United States. The Milbank Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12562
• Shanafelt, T., Trockel, M., Rodriguez, A., & Logan, D. (2020). Wellness-Centered Leadership. Academic Medicine, 96(5). https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000003907