IN-PERSON WORKSHOP: Social Prescribing - A Structured Equity-informed and Interdisciplinary Framework

Workshop Description: Social connection, meaning, and community participation are among the strongest predictors of health, well-being, and longevity. Yet within lifestyle medicine practice, these drivers of health are often acknowledged conceptually but remain difficult to assess, prescribe, and operationalize in real-world settings. While clinicians are well trained to prescribe nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and stress management, many lack practical tools, shared language, and interdisciplinary frameworks to address social connection as an actionable component of care.

This interprofessional workshop introduces social prescribing as a pragmatic, lifestyle medicine–aligned approach to activating social connection, purpose, and participation across diverse practice settings. Participants will explore how social prescribing moves beyond referrals or informal advice to become a structured, person-centered process that integrates clinical insight, behavior change principles, occupational engagement, and community-based resources.

The workshop begins with a concise overview of the evidence linking social connection to health outcomes and longevity, alongside an introduction to social prescribing as it has emerged internationally and in early U.S. contexts. Rather than focusing on policy or system-level reform, the emphasis is on practical application: how social prescribing can be implemented today, even within time-limited clinical environments and varied organizational structures.

A core focus of the session is role clarity and interprofessional collaboration. Participants will examine how different members of the lifestyle medicine team—including physicians, advanced practice clinicians, occupational therapists, community health workers, social workers, health coaches, and allied professionals—contribute distinct and complementary functions in the social prescribing process. Clear differentiation of roles helps reduce ambiguity, prevent scope overlap, and support sustainable implementation within team-based care models.

The workshop also highlights the importance of person-centered and equity-informed approaches. Social prescribing is framed not as a one-size-fits-all intervention, but as a process grounded in understanding what matters most to individuals—their values, roles, routines, cultural context, and lived environment. Participants will explore how to identify meaningful opportunities for social connection that fit within a person’s daily life, address barriers to access, and leverage existing community assets such as movement-based groups, arts and cultural organizations, volunteer opportunities, and other sources of belonging and purpose.

Experiential learning is central to the workshop design. Participants will engage in small-group, interdisciplinary case discussions that reflect common clinical scenarios, including social isolation, chronic disease management, life transitions, and loss of purpose. Guided prompts will support participants in applying a structured social prescribing framework, clarifying team roles, and identifying practical next steps that can be adapted to their own clinical, community, or organizational contexts.

In addition to patient-focused application, the workshop invites reflection on clinicians’ own social participation and connection to their communities, recognizing the relevance of social connection to professional well-being and sustainability in practice. Participants will be encouraged to consider how increased familiarity with local community resources can enhance both personal resilience and patient care.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a shared conceptual framework for social prescribing, practical strategies for interdisciplinary implementation, and actionable ideas for integrating social connection into lifestyle medicine practice without reliance on proprietary tools or specialized infrastructure. The workshop is designed to be applicable across clinical, community, academic, and health system settings.