As newly appointed Chair of the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) I thought it was important to invite Dr Kamila Hawthorne to contribute as guest author to Connecting Conversations, recognising the importance of NASP in providing both national and global support to the development and growth of social prescribing.

Professor Kamila Hawthorne is a highly respected Welsh general practitioner and medical academic, currently serving as Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Council and Chair of the National Academy for Social Prescribing. She qualified from Oxford University in 1984 and completed her GP training in Nottingham in 1988. She has over 37 years of clinical experience, with around 30 years spent working in South Wales, often serving deprived communities including the Cardiff docks area and Welsh Valleys. She is a prominent academic medical educator, having held professorial roles including Head of the Graduate Entry Medicine Programme at Swansea University and Associate Dean for Medicine at the University of Surrey. She has been recognized multiple times for her clinical excellence and dedication to community health, being named 'GP of the Year' twice and receiving the UK Doctor of the Year Diabetes prize in 2000. Her services to general practice were formally acknowledged by being awarded an MBE in the 2017 Queen's New Year Honours.

Professor Hawthorne is deeply committed to a primary care workforce comprised of inclusive, and community-focused clinicians and staff, emphasizing leadership, digital skills, and social responsibility in medical education. She actively advocates for the role of general practitioners as patient advocates and champions reducing disparities in health outcomes.

I look forward with hope and excitement for her future as Chair at NASP.

I hope you enjoy reading her blog. 

Professor Kamila's experience with Social Prescribing

As a GP for the past 37 years, I have seen the growth in practice and evidence-base of the concept of 'social prescribing' as a way of reaching those parts of human need that biomedical sciences and medicines cannot reach. As a clinician, having these options available for my patients is a very welcome extension to the biomedical ways I can help them. In addition to the care co-ordinators attached to my GP practice, we also have a wonderful volunteer-led community organic garden a short distance away, by the banks of the Cynon River in the Welsh Valleys, where I can also recommend patients for 'green therapy', companionship and confidence-building. As Chair of the Council of the Royal College of GPs, I have used every opportunity to promote the value of evidence-based social prescribing approaches to my 55,000 GP members, and to external stakeholders such as NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care, Government ministers and patient organisations. The wide range of social prescribing will provide a key base for the neighbourhood health services being proposed by the 10 Year Health Plan.

For me, it started in the late 1990s, when my locality instituted a 'book prescription' scheme, and patients and I would look through the titles on offer for mild to moderate mental health problems, and select something the patient thought would help them. But in fact, when I reflect on it, 10 years earlier, I'd been working on a research project in Nottingham and Manchester, using community-based link-workers to deliver healthy lifestyle and healthcare advice to South Asian patients with Type 2 Diabetes. That was also social prescribing. This was based on something I'd seen 10 years earlier, in 1979, as a first-year medical student on a travel scholarship to a community health project in Jamkhed, right in the centre of India. I'd seen local community women using pictures on cards to explain to young mothers in the surrounding villages, how to protect their children under 5yrs from dehydration and death caused by diarrhoea and vomiting diseases. There is much we can learn from great progress being made in other parts of the world, as my experience shows. Social prescribing has been ingrained in my training, although it was never delivered in any orthodox manner as part of a medical school curriculum.

Atul Gawande brought publicity to the concept that people should be asked 'what matters to you?' rather than 'what is the matter with you?' in his highly popular book 'Being Mortal'. Everyone has a different list of what matters to them, and we need to be aware that 'social prescribing' also needs to think about itself as a diverse community of practice - healthcare providers such as GPs provide it to their patients in rapid soundbites during their consultations, but so do their non-medically trained staff such as surgery receptionists, community health and wellbeing workers, link-workers, care-navigators and carers. It all contributes to the concept of 'Health Creation', working with people to help them improve their health through improving confidence in themselves, healthier lifestyles, better relationships with loved ones and support to those who are hard-pressed for whatever reason.

I have recently become Chair of the Trustee Board of the National Academy for Social Prescribing, and in my discussions with new colleagues, there is a real vision developing of ways in which all these diverse approaches to creating health in co-production with patients, can be brought together within the Academy as a place where people can find theories, models, and standards of caring, to understand, develop and deliver new ways to develop healthy individuals, relationships, communities and neighbourhoods, working integrally with the NHS and its new 10 Year Health Plan for Neighbourhood Health Services. But I see the vision also extending beyond these to be embedded in grassroot levels so that it becomes part of what we do in normal everyday life to build cohesive and healthy communities. 

About Professor Kamila:

Part of the world I live: South Wales, UK

Occupation: General Practitioner and Chair of the Royal College of GPs

What makes You well? Spending time in the garden, and with family and friends.

Why is social prescribing important? It recognises that co-production with our patients to enable them to make changes to their lives and ways of doing things can bring tremendous health benefits for them, their families and communities.

Your favourite nature-based space? My garden

Your favourite music? Shostakovich's 'The Gadfly'

Your favourite pastime? Gardening and growing things from seed
If you had one wish for social prescribing, what would it be? That the creation of health that social prescribing enables becomes a central part of our approach to a healthy nation.

What are your leadership tips for others who want to set up social prescribing projects? To be persistent, authentic and bring people with you.

Which one person has most influenced you and why? My MD supervisor who had faith in me, and saw my potential at an early stage in my career, and encouraged and supported me.

Any advice for others when working in this space with communities? Keep networking and building good working relationships - it always pays off!