‘Green social prescribing’ (GSP) describes activities prescribed to people (e.g. by their doctor or a link worker) that take place in the outdoors, typically with other people, delivered by a specific organisation.

We are working with seven sites across England:

• Humber and North Yorkshire Health & Care Partnership
• South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Integrated Care System
• Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System
• Joined Up Care Derbyshire Sustainability and Transformation Partnership
• Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership
• Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership
• Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Sustainability and Transformation Partnership

We are interested to know more about participant experiences of the Green Social Prescribing activities. To find people to talk to, we would like green activity providers to ask those taking part in their green and blue activities whether they would be willing to be involved and interviewed as part of our project.

If participants are interested, they will be asked if green activity providers can pass on their name and contact details to the research team. The research team will then get in touch to have a quick chat and arrange a date and time for an interview. We will also ask permission to hold a second follow-up interview with interviewees about four months after the first interview, so we can see how participant experiences may have changed.

People who agree to participate will be given a Love2Shop voucher as a thank you and will be kept up to date with the project results when the project finishes in 2025.

  Our findings will help to understand the different ways people benefit from green social prescribing and make clear recommendations for improving how green social prescribing is funded and          implemented across the UK.

                We will be interviewing people from September 2024. If you have any questions, please contact Harriet Hunt at h.a.hunt@exeter.ac.uk.

• Interview participants can access an information sheet about the interviews here: GSP extension participant information sheet
• Interview participants can access an interview consent form here: GSP extension service user consent form

The wider research project

The wider project aims to

1. Gain a deeper understanding of value for money, in relation to supporting people with varying levels of mental health need (pre-determinants and early symptomatology of mental ill-health) together with impact on current health service provision.
2. Improve the quality, consistency and linkage between process and outcome data at a system level to enable individuals to be tracked more systematically from referral by a link worker (or other allied health professional) through to nature-based providers, as well as understanding those reaching green activities through other routes.
3. Explore sustainable funding options, for example through health service commissioning or new models of collaborative place-based funding.