I first came across the work of Cormac Russell around fifteen years ago whilst working in a local NHS Commissioning organisation where in Essex where the County Council and its CVS's (voluntary infrastructure organisation's) had commissioned his ABCD training and support. Since then I have engaged in his training, heard him speak at conferences and invited him to give the keynote at the International Social Prescribing Conference as well. What truly inspires me about Cormac is his unwavering, passion for his work and and the genuine, heartfelt way he connects with each audience he encounters. He is a captivating story teller who really does live by his own word of utilising and sharing his assets with the communities he supports and works with. Whenever, there are key changes happening across our communities in terms of policy and practice, I always wonder "what would Cormac think?" and if we get the chance, I love to enter into conversation with him.

Cormac is a globally recognized advocate for community-led development and citizen empowerment. He is the Founding Director of Nurture Developmentand a faculty member of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at DePaul University in Chicago.

Cormac has over 25 years of experience working in 38 countries, helping communities, NGOs, and governments adopt ABCD and other grassroots approaches. He has also published a number of books on the subject, including more recently Connected Community: Discovering the Health, Wealth, and Power of Neighborhoods and Rekindling Democracy: A Professional's Guide to Working in Citizen Space .

Cormac Russell has profoundly reshaped how communities and institutions think about development—by flipping the script from needs-based intervention to asset-based empowerment.

He is a leading voice in Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), which emphasizes starting with what's strong in a community rather than what's wrong. His work encourages professionals to step back so citizens can step forward, reclaiming agency and fostering local leadership. He champions the idea that neighbourhoods—not institutions—are the primary units of social change. This approach has helped communities around the world build resilience, improve health outcomes, and strengthen social ties by focusing on local relationships and informal networks.

Cormac often calls for a radical reimagining of public services: moving from top-down delivery to community-centred co-production. He believes institutions should align with community strengths, not override them, enabling more sustainable and democratic outcomes. This is a globally applicable approach that aligns to neighbourhood placing the resident at the centre.

"Thinking about the person as citizen and neighbour with contributions to make towards others defines them as creators with agency, not as passive receivers with no power" 

The True Prescription: It's time we unleashed the power of our neighbourhoods

The old script, where medical care alone was the undisputed hero, is quite simply failing us. The truth is, doctors and hospitals, noble as their work may be, cannot conjure health from thin air. Our collective well-being and vitality spring not just from clinic visits but from the deep, rich soil of our communities – from the social, economic, and environmental ground upon which we stand. As health systems globally grapple with widening health inequities, ageing populations, and the relentless burden of chronic disease, there's a growing consensus that we must look beyond the clinic and allopathic models of health for solutions.

Social Prescribing (SP) seeks to challenge such institutional paradigms and instead offer a hopeful yet practical bridge for citizens to transition out of institutions and into active community life. It gives clinicians a structured and personalised way to connect individuals with non-clinical, community-based resources, such as peer groups, exercise classes, arts activities, and welfare advice. Notwithstanding, the journey from being a passive client of a service system to an active member of a community is a complex one. Too often, people are referred to community activities, but do not necessarily feel a sense of belonging there.

Link workers collaborate with many other practitioners in local neighborhoods. Many of these practitioners have different titles and use various methods; however, they all serve as community workers to some extent. As community workers, we can support people and encourage them to engage in community life, but being physically present in the community does not mean truly belonging to it. Someone might spend a few hours a day at a community center but go unnoticed on the days they are absent. This indicates that efforts to build lasting connections have not yet been fully made. The Link Workers I have met are dedicated and civic-minded; their primary loyalty is to the people they support, helping them contribute not only to their own well-being but also to that of the broader community.

Savvy community workers understand that to support a person in belonging to a community, they must find ways that enable them to have a valued social role. It is not enough to value the person or even to find out what matters to them; we must also ensure that they matter to other members of the community if our goal is to promote more interdependence in natural community life.

Yet, far too often, the promise to build deep and lasting relationships becomes trapped in an outdated framework: the service model. Over the past hundred years, well-meaning progressives have unintentionally created systems where people are simply seen as recipients, waiting in line for services provided by institutions or nonprofits. While the goal was to meet needs or fix presumed deficits, it was also about unlocking the hidden potential within individuals and their communities. Sadly, many human service systems have fallen into policies and practices that encourage institutionalization and define people by what they lack. The community, with its unseen reserves of health-promoting assets, is sidelined, denied its rightful role as a co-creator of health. In such restrictive cultures, individuals risk being viewed as passive care recipients, which reinforces dependency instead of fostering personal and collective agency. This long shadow affects the work of Link Workers and other Community Workers, which is why I argue that, alongside community building at the micro level, we must also undertake necessary change efforts at the macro level of our institutions to transform the structural norms that continue to hinder the skilled work of deinstitutionalizing and reclaiming community.

But there's another path, a much more powerful one gaining momentum. It's called Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). This isn't about needs assessments and deficit maps; it's about focusing on what's already present, what's already strong. ABCD recognizes the value of services but emphasizes that they don't hold a monopoly on creating health. It's about seeing the skills, relationships, local institutions, and informal networks—the vibrant tapestry of strengths that keep a community alive and thriving. ABCD proclaims this loudly: citizens aren't just service recipients; they are the main creators of health. They have the natural ability to weave the very fabric of their community's well-being. It's about discovering, connecting, and mobilizing these assets through community-led efforts.

Viewing SP through an ABCD lens reveals a powerful outlook on the future of population health. In this perspective, SP should never be seen just as a referral system; it is a complex process of deinstitutionalization in favor of recommunalization, acting as a means to animate collective agency. When community work is done effectively, people aren't merely directed to a group; they are helped to engage deeply within community life. The link worker, far from just managing cases, becomes a facilitator of connection, co-production, and a supporter of citizen-led initiatives. This approach focuses on developing communities from the inside out, not just patching them up externally.

To truly make this profound shift, institutions must shed their "fixer" mentality and become "alongsiders" – walking shoulder-to-shoulder with communities, helping to uncover and amplify local capacity. This means:

• Training link workers in ABCD principles.

• Collaboratively mapping the hidden treasures within neighbourhoods.

• Carving out sacred space for community-led initiatives.

• Intentionally resourcing those informal groups and neighbourhood efforts that weave inclusion and belonging – the very threads of our mental and physical health.

When grounded in an asset-based community development approach, Social Prescribing offers a pedagogy for fostering citizen-led health creation. This approach has a strong potential to enhance social cohesion and reduce isolation. The future of SP, and our health overall, depends not on what institutions do for communities but on what people do with and for each other, with institutions supporting these efforts. It's time we recognize the incredible capacity for health creation that exists within every community, waiting to be discovered. 

About Cormac:

Part of the world I live in: The village of Clonskeagh, Dublin, Ireland.

Occupation: Social Explorer

What makes you well? Active involvement in my local community and my affinity groups.

Why is social prescribing important? Any form of community work that deinstitutiuonalises and recommunalises is essential, and SP link work in my view is part of that long and richly diverse tradition.

Your favourite nature-based space? Glendalough, Co. Wicklow

Your favourite music? The Waterboys

Your favourite pastime? Walking and talking, and writing poetry

If you had one wish for social prescribing, what would it be? That it would see itself as one current in the broader river of community building.

What are your leadership tips for others who want to set up social prescribing projects? Think Community first.

Which one person has most influenced you and why? John McKnight, because he framed the ABCD approach so decisively.

Any advice for others when working in this space with communities? Recognise that communities are primary producers of well-being, our job is to cheer them on and support them.