The Problem: The ‘Preventing and Tackling Mental Ill Health through Green Social Prescribing’ Project was part of a two-year £5.77m cross-governmental initiative focusing on how systems can be developed to enable the use of nature-based settings and activities to promote wellbeing and improve mental health. It tested how to increase use and connectivity to green social prescribing services in England in order to improve mental health outcomes, reduce health inequalities and reduce demand on the health and social care system.

The Solution: The University of Sheffield working in partnership with the University of Exeter and Sheffield Hallam University, was commissioned to evaluate this initiative, which aimed to iteratively feed into project design and implementation throughout the funded period, and inform wider rollout of Green Social Prescribing following the initiative. It addressed the current lack of evidence on designing and delivering green social prescribing to achieve mental health and wellbeing outcomes. The evaluation assessed processes, outcomes and value-for-money, and improved understanding of what works, for whom, in what circumstances and why.

The Impact: The results showed that after taking part in the schemes, people’s feelings of happiness and of life being worthwhile jumped to near national averages, while levels of anxiety fell significantly. The project also found the cost of a green prescription was about £500, making it cost-effective compared with other treatments. Cognitive behavioural therapy costs about £1,000 for 10 sessions.

The Problem: Loneliness is increasingly recognised as a public health issue and is considered comparable to obesity and smoking in terms of its detrimental impact on health. The British Red Cross and Co-op developed the Community Connectors programme, a national scheme but tailored to local areas, which sought to provide service users with up to 12 weeks of support to help signpost them to community activities which would help to address their loneliness.

The Solution: British Red Cross commissioned the University of Sheffield to undertake a formative and summative evaluation, to measure how the service impacts on levels of social isolation and loneliness in service users, in order to provide robust evidence to inform BRC decision-making with regard to wider rollout and support advocacy.

The Impact: Two papers published as a result of this work have been cited in a number of policy documents and articles for a range of organisations including the UK Government, Welsh Government, Canadian Health Evidence and Policy Unit, and the Centre for Social Justice.