Prescribing Connection: The Science and Solutions

FEATURING JULIA HOTZ - The health care system in the United States is generally an individualist one, requiring people to acquire health insurance and find a personal physician who will prescribe medication as needed for physical ailments, or a psychiatrist who may prescribe an antidepressant for mental illness. Our health is viewed as separate from our environments and from each other, and from socio-economic stressors such as financial insecurity. 

Now, a new movement, based on an old idea, is taking hold: What if in addition to prescribing medication, doctors also prescribed activities that addressed our lack of connection? 

Writing about “social prescribing,” as it’s called, is journalist Julie Hotz. Her new book The Connection Cure is considered to be the U.S.’s first book exploring the science, the stories, and the increasing popularity of this new trend.