There is a growing movement of health care providers prescribing social activities and community engagement to patients, not just pills.
By Leif Hass, Greater Good Magazine, Image: screenshot from article, January 15, 2025
As a hospital-based physician, I almost always treat people with serious chronic health conditions. As a consequence of these conditions, they lose not just energy but also connection to much of what makes them feel alive. Such was the case with Mr. T., a 67-year-old man I recently cared for at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, California.
“Life with kidney failure is hard. Seems my life is just going to dialysis and that’s it. Sometimes I don’t know if I can keep doing it,” he told me. In fact, he was in the hospital due to not doing it. He had just been admitted with shortness of breath after missing one of his critical three-times-a-week dialysis sessions.
Health conditions can leave folks isolated; this inevitably leads to worse health and quality of life. For a few years now, I have been trying to address this with what I call my “Prescriptions for Health and Happiness”: paper prescriptions I write for things like helping others, writing a thank you note, singing in the shower or dancing, or walking in a beautiful place.
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