Evaluation of Healthy Me, Healthy Community, a social prescribing pilot program in Port Macquarie
Status: Completed February 2025
Client: Feros Care and Healthy North Coast
Background
Social prescribing is a promising approach to tackle loneliness and improve the wellbeing of communities, and consistently emerges as a priority in health strategies and plans. Primary Health Networks (PHNs) have been identified as having an important role to play in scaling up social prescribing in Australia.
Healthy Me, Healthy Community was a social prescribing program designed to support people experiencing loneliness or isolation living within the Port Macquarie region — delivered by Feros Care and funded by Healthy North Coast (the North Coast PHN). It was an opportunity to pilot and test a social prescribing initiative in communities with relatively high health needs known to be associated with social isolation and loneliness, and high rates of general practice and hospital attendances.
We were engaged to independently evaluate the pilot program to assess its outcomes, explore the suitability and sustainability of the program model and inform future planning and commissioning of social prescribing in the Primary Health Network context.
Approach
Our evaluation involved a mixed-methods approach, incorporating analysis of datasets covering activities, referrals, clients and pre/post outcomes relating to loneliness, as well as qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups with service users, program staff and other key stakeholders. We were guided by an evaluation framework that we collaboratively developed with the program’s provider and funder to ensure our evaluation focused on the most relevant and meaningful outcomes.
Outcome
We provided an evaluation report back to Feros Care and Healthy North Coast that summarised findings covering over 21 months of program delivery and more than 250 service users. Our report was structured around five key themes that emerged and actionable recommendations to help support the future design, commissioning and delivery of social prescribing initiatives in a regional context.
The evaluation contributes to the growing evidence base and interest in social prescribing in Australia by highlighting importants learnings for effective social prescribing programs, covering areas such as co-design, primary care integration, community activation and capacity, workforce development and outcomes measurement.
How this links to our vision of 'a more impactful social purpose sector'
This project supports our vision of a more impactful social purpose sector by demonstrating the effectiveness of innovative approaches to improving wellbeing and connection of communities and particularly those experiencing loneliness. Our work contributed practical, evidence-based insights to inform future work in the social prescribing space, both in this region and beyond, as the interest in social prescribing as a concept in Australia grows.
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