Community-driven change of health inequalities: Embedding relational learning in social prescribing

Collaboration with communities has become essential to address health inequalities. But despite the rhetoric of health improvement policy, it will continue to prove hard in practice to achieve real change in communities and health and social care systems. Community-driven approaches are widely adopted but remain pockets of innovation with limited influence and financial security. This paper presents a novel relational approach developed in the context of social prescribing, a popular way to address the wider determinants of health by referring people to community-based activities. It argues that embedding relational learning in the practice of social prescribing can enable previously disconnected community members, local authority officials, and third sector workers to develop reciprocal relationships and shared resources for changing health inequalities. Based on action research with a social prescribing service in East-Birmingham, it demonstrates how to co-produce a relational learning space and reflects on structural challenges with changing health and social care systems. It concludes by discussing how embedding this community-driven approach could change health inequalities.