Untapping the U.K. Fitness Industry’s Social Prescribing Plan

Earlier this year, ukactive released a new report, Leading the Change, looking at the impact of social prescribing within the health, fitness, and leisure sector. Social prescribing is a non-medical referral pathway that links people with a range of community support to promote improvements in their health and well-being.

We know the major role physical activity plays in reducing the burden on healthcare and social care services. Specifically, locally, the ever-increasing pressures on the NHS—the United Kingdom’s National Health Service.

We want to expand awareness on the impact health and fitness has on public health, fulfill our industry’s potential and our shared ambition for growth.

ukactive’s growth modeling predicts that—with supportive measures from the government—gym, swimming pool, and leisure center membership in the U.K. could rise to 20% of the population by 2030. That’s a 5% increase from 2019 levels, and equals more than five million additional members. This growth represents an opportunity to make an even greater contribution to our collective wellness. As such, there is clearly a growing movement behind social prescribing, another area where our sector has so much to offer.

As part of the NHS Long Term Plan, there is now a focus on personalized care—providing people with choice and control over the support they receive based on what matters to them. Within this plan sits social prescribing.

Social Prescribing Goes Hand in Hand With the Health, Fitness, & Leisure Sector

Social prescribing aims to support people who have a range of social, emotional, or practical needs, with initiatives often focused on improving physical and mental health. Meanwhile, across the health, fitness, and leisure sector, a host of physical activity-based initiatives already support such health and well-being improvements. These include specific and structured interventions such as exercise referral and fall prevention, as well as signposting to other relevant physical activities, arts, and cultural activities.

Although some of these interventions, such as exercise referral, have been in existence for some time and may differ from the specific goals of social prescribing, they all aim to improve the health and well-being of participants and, therefore, have a part to play in social prescribing.

However, more can be done to connect social prescribing to local facilities, and, in turn, allow the local community to access physical activity and other social prescribing services.

With a clear potential scale of this opportunity, in 2020, ukactive partnered with NHS England (NHSE), Sport England, and the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) to connect social prescribing with fitness and leisure activities in local communities. The ukactive Research Institute also began a research consultation with a primary goal of understanding the extent to which social prescribing-related services are already delivered across the fitness and leisure sector.

Based on the findings of this research, four recommendations have been proposed to support the delivery of social prescribing within the health, fitness, and leisure sector.

1. Raise awareness of the role gyms, pools, and leisure centers have in social prescribing

2. Increase the knowledge of social prescribing among the physical activity workforce

3. Connect more gyms, pools, and leisure facilities to community networks

4. Develop a sector-wide framework for measuring social prescribing

Raise awareness of the role gyms, pools, and leisure centers have in social prescribing.

We recommend that the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID), Richmond Group of Charities, and Sport England collaborate with ukactive to increase the visibility of gyms, pools, and leisure centers in social prescribing opportunities. This collaboration should include a specific focus on the management of long-term health conditions and integrating physical activity and public health initiatives.

Increase the knowledge of social prescribing among the physical activity workforce.

Operators across the health, fitness, and leisure sector should strengthen workforce capacity and awareness of social prescribing as well as understanding of health inequalities. Training can be done using the sector’s professional standards, including Health Navigator and Working with People with Long Term Conditions.

Connect more gyms, pools, and leisure facilities to community networks.

There’s an opportunity for NASP, Active Partnerships, Sport England, and ukactive to co-create place-based opportunities with Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise. This will enable regional innovation and create resources that support gyms, pools, and leisure centers to connect more with cultural and community groups within their local areas, thereby providing opportunities for greater cross-sector partnerships.

Develop a sector-wide framework for measuring social prescribing.

A social prescribing evidence framework ought to be developed, led by NHS England and NASP, which can be implemented sector-wide with the support of ukactive, Sport England, NHS England, NASP, and OHID. This should include consistent and automated data capturing, sharing, and reporting, so programs can be successful.

The objective is that these recommendations help support the U.K. sector’s initiative to provide NHS England 500,000 hours of physical activity that could benefit up to 100,000 consumers at no cost. Through social prescribing, this pledge aims to outline how physical activity can act as a solution to improve quality of life and better integrate the health, fitness, and leisure industry with healthcare.

Armed with better knowledge of existing provisions for social prescribing and areas for improvement, we now must move the recommendations into guidelines for the thousands of gyms, pools, and leisure centers that exist within every community. ukactive will work with partners across our sector and the wider health community to make this a reality so that our sector can play its fullest role in improving the nation’s health and well-being.

Download a copy of Leading the Change at ukactive.com.