Evaluating Social Prescribing – Literature review for the MDSN Evaluation Community of Practice collaborative project

The review has been produced to support the Midlands Decision Support Network (MDSN) Evaluation Community of Practice (CoP) collaborative social prescribing evaluation project.

The collaborative project aims to share learning from across different social prescribing evaluations being undertaken by members of the CoP in terms of methods (the current stage at the time of writing) and findings (later stage) to strengthen the evidence base for social prescribing through robust evaluation methods.

Because most of the evaluations that suggest social prescribing is effective draw on qualitative methods, although this review has included some of these approaches, priority was given to papers including quantitative approaches to support the collaborative project in developing robust methods for measuring impact.