I first met Professor Daisy Fancourt in 2019 when she presented the Social Prescribing Network's International Social Prescribing Conference. I was drawn immediately, not only how passionate she was for her work but how accessible and engaging she made the data she had collected and outcomes she had reached. She is a captivating storyteller that draws you in, paints a picture of indisputable statistics, creates a fascinating narrative, splattered with equally heart-wrenching and heart-warming case studies, leaving you in disbelief as to why we are not nationally commissioning every person the opportunity to connect with arts in a way that matters to them.

I have also been fortunate to experience Daisy - the teacher, as well, when I signed up to be student on the 2021 Arts Health Research Intensive held at the famous Britten Pears Arts venue in Snape Maltings, Suffolk. This immersive course is run by the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at UCL in partnership with the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health at UCL, the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and the WHO-Jameel Arts & Health Lab. Daisy's enthusiasm and joy for her work really shone through when sharing skills and knowledge in this learning experience and the students I attended with still say now what an inspiration Daisy is in their research careers. I highly recommend this learning opportunity if it's in your field at all.

Professor Daisy Fancourt stands at the forefront of an emerging field that explores the interplay of arts, social factors, and health, bridging the gap between creative practice and evidence-based medicine. As a leading academic and researcher, her work has been instrumental in shaping how we understand the profound effects of social behaviours, such as engagement in the arts and social connection on our physical and mental wellbeing. Professor Fancourt's career is marked by a determined commitment to bringing the transformative potential of creativity to the heart of public health policy and practice.

Daisy Fancourt is Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology and Head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London. Her academic training includes studies at Oxford University and King's College London, followed by a PhD in psychoneuroimmunology at UCL. She then carried out post-doctoral work at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Music, alongside involvement in NHS arts and clinical innovation programmes.

Her research programmes investigate the effects of social deficits (e.g. loneliness and social isolation), and social assets (community engagement, arts & cultural activities, social prescribing) on health outcomes. She has led popular and influential projects, including the UK's COVID-19 Social Study, which tracked the psychological and social impact of the pandemic and informed policy decisions around lockdowns and vaccine roll-out. She also directed the COVID-Minds Network, an international enabler of comparative research into the mental health consequences of COVID-19.

Professor Fancourt is deeply committed to addressing health inequalities. Her research highlights how social interventions, particularly among populations facing socioeconomic hardship or greater health challenges, can yield improvements in health and wellbeing. She argues that targeting these groups for increased engagement in the arts and social activities can play a vital role in reducing disparities and fostering more equitable health outcomes across society. Her work includes commissioned evidence summaries for government (e.g. "Evidence Summary for Policy: The Role of Arts in Improving Health and Wellbeing," for DCMS) that draw together large bodies of research to inform policy.

Professor Daisy Fancourt's career is a testament to the power of interdisciplinary thinking, data-driven advocacy, and the belief that creativity and connection are as fundamental to human health as any medical intervention. Through her research, teaching, and policy work—spanning clinical settings, large epidemiological studies, behaviour science, and international collaborations she continues to shape the future of public health, championing innovative alliances that place social prescribing and the arts at the centre of holistic, preventative care. Daisy is also a Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Arts & Health, a scientific adviser to UK government and to the WHO, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, and has secured tens of millions of pounds in funding. 

Siân Brand, 

Chair of the Social Prescribing Network

Championing the vital role of creativity and social connections in public health

The thing that inspired me to think about arts and social factors in health was my first job in the NHS, working with Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. My role included being responsible for the clinical innovations programme there. I was amazed by how often, when working with different wards and divisions, the solution to problems was something creative or arts-based. This gave me a real insight into how we can use the creativity of the arts to address some of the inherent challenges within health and social care. This experience also prompted me to think about where there could be greater opportunities to leverage creative thinking to solve broader problems.

One of the things that surprised me most when I started doing research was how loneliness isn't just something that affects us psychologically or behaviourally—it actually has fundamental biological effects. Over the last 10 years, working in this field and looking at the health impacts of loneliness, I've been part of research showing that loneliness affects processes like gene expression, the rate of biological ageing, levels of inflammatory markers, stress hormones, and aspects of our cardiovascular response. It is affecting fundamental biological processes. In other words, loneliness and other social behaviours have deep, fundamental effects on our health that we must take seriously.

A continuing challenge is that the arts are often seen as "fluffy" or not very serious. Talking about arts and health is sometimes viewed with scepticism, and it's a major challenge to get the same acceptance for the arts as we do for exercise, diet, sleep, or avoiding substances. Interestingly, all those fields also faced major challenges in being accepted. If you look back to the 1980s, for example, there were still debates about whether exercise had tangible effects on health. So, I don't see it as a bad thing that we're still facing these debates about arts and social behaviours. There has to be a process of gaining greater recognition for these behaviours and understanding how fundamental they are to our health.

A turning point in my own career was that, after working on my PhD and postdocs—which involved clinical trials and experimental studies looking at arts and other social interventions in relation to health outcomes, I decided to do additional training in epidemiology and big data statistics. This enabled me to look at other kinds of data, including electronic patient health records and cohort studies. Using these kinds of data was fundamental in demonstrating that the effects we saw in short-term intervention studies were also found across years and decades of people's lives. Engagement in the arts and other social behaviours can have long-lasting effects on our health. This also allows us to do different kinds of studies, particularly with electronic patient records, to understand how engagement in the arts and other social behaviours affect health and health-seeking behaviours.

This triangulation between experimental studies and large-scale, population-representative datasets has been critical in improving our understanding of how arts and social behaviours affect health.

Social prescribing is still an emerging field in terms of research. What's been exciting over the last few years is seeing the move from local case studies and qualitative research to more randomised controlled trials of social prescribing. This is great for the quality of evidence. Alongside that, as I mentioned, we're now starting to see large-scale outcome studies from electronic patient health records. This is pivotal in building a breadth of evidence for different stakeholders and enabling us to triangulate results across methodologies.

Social prescribing is often thought of as a strict process: a patient is referred by someone to a link worker, who then connects them to an intervention. But we're already seeing this evolve. For example, some areas are redefining the role of link workers to operate more directly within VCFSOs, who then proactively contact members of the public. Other models involve different numbers of link worker sessions or combine link working with psychological therapies. It's important for the field to have this plurality, so there are different models to fit different needs. The challenge will be deciding what we still define as "social prescribing" and whether we evolve the terminology to include these broader mechanisms.

It's critical to consider loneliness and other social factors in public health because they have tangible, meaningful impacts on health. Just as we consider physical activity, diet, and sleep, it's important to talk about social behaviours and connections. If we don't, we're missing out on supporting people to engage in modifiable behaviours that could improve their health.

Policymakers can do a lot. The work we're doing with the National Academy for Social Prescribing is trying to understand more about data capture on social prescribing, how people are integrating it into clinical records, and the challenges they face. It's important that policymakers pay attention not only to data on the impact of social prescribing, but also to the challenges and opportunities around data capture. Good quality data is fundamental: it enables great research and helps us track and improve services. But if data capture is poor, everything falls down. It's not the most exciting topic, but it could transform practice and enable much stronger evidence on the impact at patient, service, and health economic levels.

When we look at different population groups, we see that social connection and behaviours affect everyone's health. It's often those facing greater health problems and socioeconomic hardship who have the greatest improvements in health and wellbeing from social interventions. This is important from a policy perspective, because these populations are often least likely to engage in the social behaviours that would benefit them most, such as the arts. It shows that investing in reaching these populations could be particularly important for reducing inequalities in health outcomes.

To better integrate the health and social aspects of wellbeing into health systems, we need a proliferation of pathways to connect people to social behaviours—like arts, volunteering, and community groups. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need link workers or social prescribing, because everyone would engage with these activities as part of daily life. But we now recognise that link workers can be critical for reaching people who aren't already engaging in their communities and its services and may have particular health needs. I'd like to see more pathways alongside social prescribing and link worker models—for example, pathways connecting children in schools to these activities, or new mothers to community groups to combat postpartum depression or loneliness. We should think about integrating more types of pathways into older adult social care as well. There are lots of opportunities, it's about developing a range of pathways to suit different environments and needs, some link worker-based, some involving other types of connections.

I'm excited about two main projects we're working on. One is a series of clinical trials of social prescribing which are randomised controlled trials for children and adolescent mental health services, young people on waiting lists, young people finishing mental health treatments (to try to reduce relapse rates), and for children at risk of or already experiencing loneliness. It's exciting to deliver these multi-site trials across the UK, and in countries like the USA and Greece. The other project is big data work, analysing electronic patient health records through CPRD data, and working with industry partners, Access Elemental, to analyse data on social prescribing referrals. I'm excited by the data opportunities we're exploring to make better use of routine data that hasn't been fully exploited to understand social prescribing.

If I had unlimited resources, I'd love to see more trials comparing social prescribing not just with no intervention, but with other gold standard interventions already delivered in the health service, like psychological therapies. We should consider whether social prescribing is a more effective approach than those currently commissioned.

About Daisy:

Part of the world I live: London

Occupation: Epidemiologist

What makes You well? My family, especially when I combine time with them with leisure activities like nature-based activities and arts

Why is social prescribing important? Social prescribing is important because it's a fundamental mechanism for connecting people to social and leisure behaviours that are vital for health and wellbeing.

Your favourite nature-based space? My favourite nature-based space is North Wales, with its mountains, forests, sea, and industrial heritage.

Your favourite music? Renaissance choral music – I put on Palestrina every Sunday morning

Your favourite pastime? Running, hiking, reading, and playing the piano.

If you had one wish for social prescribing, what would it be? My one wish for social prescribing is clear and consistent coding within electronic patient health records. It might sound unexciting, but it could transform how we assess its implementation and impact—and it's an achievable goal.

What are your leadership tips for others who want to set up social prescribing projects? Don't scrimp on data collection. Even if you're not planning your project as a research or evaluation project, don't underestimate how vital the data could be to help you improve your delivery and impact, and to make the case to funders and commissioners for why your service should continue.

Which one person has most influenced you and why? Many people influence me, but right now I'm really inspired by the amazing link workers in my research group. There are five of them, and they're fantastic—delivering social prescribing with children and young people, and making a meaningful impact on their lives. They remind me why social prescribing is such a vital service to develop and invest in.

Any advice for others when working in this space with communities? build meaningful relationships with community partners and draw on their remarkable knowledge base. If we want to deliver meaningful social prescribing that connects people to valuable activities, we need to work closely with those who have the expertise and experience. 

Daisy has a new book out, pre-order it here