Project description
Transforming healthcare access for vulnerable groups
Many individuals face challenges accessing healthcare due to social barriers, particularly those in vulnerable situations. General practitioners often encounter health-related social problems but lack the means to address them effectively. Social prescribing (SP) bridges this gap by connecting patients to non-clinical community support through trained link workers. While SP shows promise in integrating health and social care, it remains underexplored for marginalised groups, including LGBTIQ+ individuals, refugees, and older adults living alone. With this in mind, the EU-funded SP-EU project will assess and tailor SP for these groups, using co-creation, randomised controlled trials, and qualitative research across Europe. By refining SP, SP-EU seeks to build equitable, people-centred, and integrated healthcare systems.
Objective
Social Prescribing (SP) is an innovative solution to bridging the gap between primary health care and non-clinical supports and services within the community. SP enables general practitioners who identify health-related social problems to refer patients to a so-called link worker. The link worker provides personalized support and helps these patients to access community resources by addressing any barriers that may exist. SP is an approach to integrate health and social care and strengthen community orientation. SP thereby mitigates the effects of social determinants of health on health outcomes. However, SP has not been tailored to the needs of people in vulnerable situations yet and the effectiveness of SP to improve their access to health and care services remains unknown.
The overall objective of SP-EU is to assess the potential of SP to promote and improve access to health and care services for people in vulnerable situations, focusing on three primary target groups: LGBTIQ persons, refugees and first-generation immigrants and older adults living alone.
SP-EU follows a mixed-methods approach: SP adaptations will be co-created with the target groups, to adapt them to their specific needs and social contexts. A pragmatic randomized controlled trial will assess the effectiveness of the adapted SP to improve access by randomizing 1,776 patients in eight EU countries to receive SP or care as usual. A qualitative analysis in five European countries will explore enabling and limiting factors to the implementation of SP from different stakeholders’ perspectives. Additionally, we will communicate and disseminate results and translate them into policy action.
SP-EU will enable health care systems to implement SP as a scalable, safe, cost-effective and people-centred solution to provide equal access to sustainable care. Thus, SP-EU will enable the transformation of European health care systems to equitable, community-based, people-centred and integrated health care.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) HORIZON-HLTH-2024-CARE-04-two-stage
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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
10117 Berlin
Germany
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Participants (20)
1010 Wien
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82256 Furstenfeldbruck
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The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
PL4 8AA Plymouth
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50 367 Wroclaw
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08007 Barcelona
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Legal entity other than a subcontractor which is affiliated or legally linked to a participant. The entity carries out work under the conditions laid down in the Grant Agreement, supplies goods or provides services for the action, but did not sign the Grant Agreement. A third party abides by the rules applicable to its related participant under the Grant Agreement with regard to eligibility of costs and control of expenditure.
08007 Barcelona
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1099 085 Lisboa
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9220 Aalborg
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42119 Wuppertal
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OX1 2JD Oxford
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20251 Hamburg
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72072 TUBINGEN
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The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
10000 ZAGREB
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79106 Freiburg
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1000 Bruxelles / Brussel
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9000 Gent
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SE1 8XX LONDON
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1000 Ljubljana
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2920 CHARLOTTENLUND
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10629 Berlin
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Partners (2)
Partner organisations contribute to the implementation of the action, but do not sign the Grant Agreement.
3012 Bern
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Partner organisations contribute to the implementation of the action, but do not sign the Grant Agreement.
2504 Biel
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