Social prescribing as seen by two future doctors

The Rozsa Foundation has always had an interest in exploring and advocating for the broader benefits of the arts in society. Early funding projects such as Dancing with Parkinsons with Decidedly Jazz Danceworks and Anne Flynn at the University of Calgary showed us the profound impact that art can make in physical and medical challenges. We are also always interested in exploring ideas that may help strengthen the arts sector by identifying and accessing other streams of revenue. When the Cummings School of Medicine at the University of Calgary approached us about taking part in their Community Engaged Learning, we jumped at the opportunity. The broad area at the intersection of arts and health was our starting point, and in working with the students' interests and time, we came to the practice of social prescribing.

Joseph Bahhadi and Dominic Skitsko were the two med students who joined us in 2025, and they did lots of work digging into social prescribing in the arts and how it could be implemented locally. Their Community Engaged Learning class finished in the fall of 2025, and they agreed to share an article with Rozsa Newsletter readers presenting their conclusions on the subject. Two new students will be joining the Foundation in 2026 to continue the project, and we hope to organize a convening in Calgary at some point in the year, bringing together people currently working in this area to build a deeper shared understanding of its potential for the arts and health sectors and possibly build an implementable framework and system for widespread adoption. If you are working in this area and are interested in participating, please contact Lisa Mackay. 

Social prescribing and social determinants of health: a perspective from medical trainees

by Joseph Bahhadi and Dominic Skitsko, University of Calgary Class, Cumming School of Medicine, MD Class of 2027.

As part of our medical curriculum, the social determinants of health are often emphasized as a primary cause of disease and illness. By framing one’s health as something that is often determined or exacerbated by one’s social, cultural, environmental, and economic setting, the root causes of disease can be better understood. In many cases, social isolation, lack of physical activity, and lack of social support and community are central to many disease processes such as dementia, heart disease, and depression. Although recognizing the social determinants of health is helpful as future physicians, the recognition of these problems raises the question, “is healthcare, as it currently exists, able to address these issues effectively?"

Our guess is that most healthcare workers would argue, 'no,' and not for a lack of trying. In 1974, the Canadian Minister of National Health and Welfare acknowledged the reality that health care was unable to address the social determinants of health without help in the Lalonde report. The social determinants of health are too great a challenge for any one sector, and with the healthcare system already asking an outsized investment from its practitioners, a collaborative approach may offer a way forward. This approach has been intermittent and sporadic since the publication of the Lalonde report.

Collaboration with the arts sector specifically has been advocated for many years by pockets of passionate artists, healthcare professionals, and arts organizations as having great potential for addressing the social problems of patients. One possible form for this collaboration is through social prescribing.  Social prescribing is a way of integrating social support into medical management through referral to community-based programs.  Essentially, a doctor can provide patients with a prescription for a social program. After spending months examining the research on and implementation of social prescribing around the world, we have determined that a network-wide arts prescribing framework necessitates a new role to help facilitate the process of connecting patients with community arts supports: link workers. Link workers are non-clinical, community-based professionals who bridge the gap between healthcare and the community. The process may look something like this: a healthcare practitioner identifies a social need in a patient and refers them to a link-worker who is then able to connect them with an appropriate community partner based on their needs and abilities.

According to an AHS report published in 2024, there are 14 social prescribing initiatives in Alberta (see Table 8 of Social prescribing: final report; Alberta Government). These programs are heterogeneous in their aims to navigate social barriers such as securing food, encouraging physical activity through dance, and dealing with grief. Social barriers such as these are common topics of discussion when learning medicine, as modern medical pedagogy moves away from biomedical and reductionistic views of health and embraces a more person-centered approach. Along with the benefits to a patient's wellbeing that come from taking a person-centered approach, there is also a problem; it is hard to teach and even harder to implement. The futility of addressing complex social issues in a 15-minute appointment is often an anxiety we have when thinking about our future clinical practice. Social prescribing becoming a mainstay in clinics could prove to be a paradigm-changing development for healthcare practitioners, and we sincerely hope that social prescribing continues to proliferate in the coming years.