The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging

By Julia Hotz *A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ* *A HARVARD PUBLIC HEALTH MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * COVERED IN NPR, NBC, BBC, CNN, FOX, Ologies, The Guardian, Slate, PBS, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American & more. " Everyone should read this book .” —Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Medical Correspondent at CNN and New York Times bestselling author In this combination of diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery, journalist Julia Hotz helps us discover the lasting and life-changing power of social prescribing. Traditionally, when we get sick, health care professionals ask, “What's the matter with you?” But around the world, teams of doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers have started to flip the script, asking “What matters to you?” Instead of solely pharmaceutical prescriptions, they offer “social prescriptions”—referrals to community activities and resources, like photography classes, gardening groups, and volunteering gigs. The results speak for themselves. Science shows that social prescribing is effective for treating symptoms of the modern world's most common ailments—depression, ADHD, addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, dementia, diabetes, and loneliness. As health care's de facto cycle of “diagnose-treat-repeat” reaches a breaking point, social prescribing has also proven to reduce patient wait times, lower hospitalization rates, save money, and reverse health worker burnout. And as a general sense of unwellness plagues more of us, social prescriptions can help us feel healthier than we've felt in years. As the first book on social prescribing, The Connection Cure empowers you to find, experience, and implement this revolutionary medicine in your own community. While touring the globe to investigate the spread of social prescribing to over thirty countries, Hotz meets people personifying its revolutionary potential: an aspiring novelist whose art workshop helps her cope with trauma symptoms and

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