Humber and North Yorkshire Green Social Prescribing

Female holding bag of garden cuttings

People doing yoga outside

Group of females laughing outside

Man holding plants

People canoeing on river

Green social prescribing is an important component of the government’s Covid-19 mental health recovery plan, to support people living with mental illness. Green Social Prescribing involves taking part in activities in nature that have been designed for people with specified health needs.

In 2021 Defra, NHS England and NHS Improvement, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Department of Health and Social Care, Natural England and Public Health England made an investment of over £5.5 million to embed Green Social Prescribing in communities.

Seven successful ‘test and learn’ Green Social Prescribing sites were identified in England, to include the Humber and North Yorkshire Green Social Prescribing programme. The aim of the ‘test and learn’ sites is to embed green social prescribing into communities in order to:

improve mental health outcomes
reduce health inequalities
reduce demand on the health and social care system
develop best practice in making green social activities more resilient and accessible

The NIHR YH ARC hosts the evaluation of the green social prescribing ‘test and learn’ site across the Humber and North Yorkshire (HNY) area. The HNY ‘test and learn’ evaluation project is co-led by Dr Peter Coventry (Department of Health Sciences) and Prof Piran White (Department of Environment and Geography). Trish Darcy (Research Associate, Department of Health Sciences) oversees the day-to-day management and delivery of the project. Data collection started in January 2022 and will end in November 2022.

See the final report for the Humber and North Yorkshire Green Social Prescribing Programme Cohort Evaluation (PDF , 1,950kb) prepared for HEY Smile Foundation on behalf of the Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership (April, 2023)