Professor Helen Chatterjee MBE is one of the inspirational pioneers whose research helped to shape the social prescribing movement we know today. Her work has consistently challenged us to look beyond traditional healthcare and recognise the extraordinary health and wellbeing potential that already exists within our communities, from museum and cultural organisations, to natural spaces and community networks.
I first met Helen at the very first Social Prescribing Network event in Westminster, and hearing her present is always a joy. Her work is so relatable, grounded in evidence but, importantly, rooted in community. Helen was among the early researchers to advance social prescribing, beginning in 2014 with Museums on Prescription, an AHRC-funded project connecting socially isolated older people with museums and creative activities. This pioneering research helped build the evidence base for cultural social prescribing and demonstrated the potential of community and cultural assets to support health and wellbeing.
Helen's contribution extends well beyond individual research projects. She co-founded the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA) and is a Founding Trustee of the National Centre for Creative Health (NCCH), helping to establish and strengthen the wider infrastructure for creative health and its role in improving wellbeing and tackling inequalities. Her contribution has also been recognised through two Royal Society for Public Health Awards and the 2018 AHRC-Wellcome Health Humanities Leadership Award and Health Humanities Medal. Helen received an MBE in 2015 for Services to Higher Education and Culture
She has continued to champion the role of arts, culture, nature and community in health, including through the development of the world's first Masters in Creative Health and her current leadership of the "Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities" programme.
What stands out throughout Helen's work is her commitment to co-production and lived experience. She emphasises the importance of starting with what matters to people, working alongside communities rather than making assumptions about them, and recognising the vital contribution of small, grassroots organisations.
For me, Helen exemplifies what makes social prescribing so powerful: research that listens, evidence that is connected to real lives, and a belief that the strengths and assets of communities should be central to how we think about health and wellbeing.
The role of community assets in supporting neighbourhood health and tackling inequalities
by Professor Helen Chatterjee, MBE
I first got involved with social prescribing after securing a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2014 entitled 'Museums on Prescription'. Having been a Museum Curator and researcher for over ten years I was keenly aware of the importance of understanding and demonstrating the value of cultural assets, such as museums, to communities, but at that time most museums were not working in the area of social prescribing. So, my wonderful colleagues Prof Paul Camic, Dr Linda Thomson and I set about recruiting museums who were interested in working with us to explore the potential of museums as social prescribing partners.
The Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, Maidstone Museum, The Amelia Scott, The British Museum, The Postal Museum, UCL Museums and Central Saint Martins Museum came on board to connect older adults experiencing loneliness and isolation with creative, museum-based activities to support wellbeing. Those museums have established really vibrant health and wellbeing programmes, and the data we gathered to demonstrate the process and impact of growing a social prescribing programme has been used to help many other museums develop their own social prescribing offers.
In 2016 I was invited by the inimitable and truly inspirational Dr Marie Polley MBE to attend a gathering of folk to share our experiences of social prescribing - and this turned out to be the formation of the Social Prescribing Network. Marie and I have since become great friends and collaborators, working on numerous projects together. Recently for example, we worked with NASP - and several other brilliant social prescribing-academics such as Profs Kerryn Husk, Marcello Bertotti, Chris Dayson and others - as part of the NASP Academic Partners Collaborative, to publish a series of evidence reviews covering topics such as:
What's really exciting over the past few years is the growth in the number of academic studies and funded research projects exploring the impact and efficacy of social prescribing. This signals a real shift from academics, funders, policymakers and providers alike, in recognising that social prescribing has significant impact, and the power to address the wider social determinants of health, as well as specific health conditions.
Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities: A £30M investment from UKRI
I am currently leading a research programme called 'Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities' in partnership with the National Centre for Creative Health. This is a £30 million investment from UK Research and Innovation; the programme has funded 40 projects across the UK, with 12 live projects running until 2027/8. Many of these projects are exploring the implementation and impact of social prescribing with a range of communities and in a range of settings, see some great examples here:
The Mobilising Community Assets programme is demonstrating how best to integrate the VCFSE sector into health by establishing new models of working focused on neighbourhood health and tackling inequity. Our recent article in Frontiers in Public Health synthesized data from 27 of our projects, involving over 12,000 participants, making an innovative contribution to the body of research concerned with health inequalities. Outcomes showed that:
- Effective cross-sector collaborations depend on strong relationships, multidisciplinary working, and ongoing training and capacity building.
- Collaboration between community organisations and healthcare systems can deliver lasting benefits for people with long-term conditions, particularly those experiencing structural disadvantage.
- Interventions focused on deprivation, social determinants of health, health behaviours, volunteering, and community empowerment are valuable, but effectiveness varies by context.
- Applying an intersectional approach and incorporating lived experience perspectives provides deeper understanding of local needs and informs more appropriate interventions.
- Community engagement improves health outcomes among disadvantaged groups when it is meaningfully designed, implemented, and supported through effective participation.
- Integrated care models, creative health approaches, and strategies for sustainability, replication, and scale-up are important enablers of long-term impact.
- Creative and participatory research methods strengthen evidence generation and understanding of community needs.
For more info on this topic see: https://ncch.org.uk/blog/tackling-neighbourhood-inequalities-insights-from-the-mca-programme or link to our open access article: Thomson, L.J., Mughal, R., & Chatterjee, H.J. (2026). Tackling neighbourhood health inequalities in the UK through cross-sector collaborations and community engagement. Frontiers in Public Health. 14:1832109. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1832109
Helen has written 5 books, including: 'Touch in Museums' (2008), 'Museums, Health and Well-being' (2013), 'Material Connections: From Object-Based Learning to Object-Based Well-being' (2020), 'Gibbon Conservation in the Anthropocene' (2023) and over 100 publications.
More info here: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/8183-helen-chatterjee
Stay in Touch
For more information about Mobilising Community Assets you can follow us here:
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LinkedIn: Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities
About Helen:
Part of the world I live: London and Blackpool
Occupation: Academic
What makes You well? Hiking, visiting museums, figure skating, reading, going to gigs, walking the dog.
Why is social prescribing important? Social prescribing gives people the power and opportunity to identify their needs and priorities, placing what matters most to them at the centre of their care.
Your favourite nature based space? Brecon Beacons in Wales.
Your favourite music? Punk, Post-punk, goth, rock, rave.
Your favourite pastime? Hiking, Figure skating.
If you had one wish for social prescribing what would it be? For it to be accessible and available to everyone, irrespective of where you live.
What are your leadership tips for others who want to set up social prescribing projects? Collaboration and partnership working!
Which one person has most influenced you and why? Dr Marie Polley MBE, co-founder of the SPN; she truly is an inspiration, kind, generous and an all-round lovely human being.
Any advice for others when working in this space with communities?Don't assume you know what communities want – make your first task to use co-production activities to find out what matters most to the people who live in the area you plan to work in. Also don't assume that the big community providers know all of their communities best – often the small, grassroots organisations are the best connected – so invite everyone to the co-production party! And finally, embed people with lived experience in everything you do – here's a blog about some of the lessons we have been learning about why it's important to embed lived experience in your work.