ArticleSociology of health & illness2023
Constituting link working through choice and care: An ethnographic account of front-line social prescribing.
Article in Sociology of health & illness, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Harms and Negative or Unintended Consequences of Social Prescribing: A Scoping Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- What is 'Spiritual Health'? A Survey of Social Prescribers in the United Kingdom.Journal of religion and health · 2026Article
- Discussing spiritual health in primary care and the HOPE tool - a survey of social prescribers.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- 'Obviously, you can't outright ask': what are the barriers and facilitators to discussion of spiritual health within social prescribing? A study using semi-structured interviews.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- Experiences of integrating social prescribing link workers into primary care in England - bolting on, fitting in, or belonging: a realist evaluation.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Article
- Third sector perspectives on community link worker referrals in social prescribing: a realist analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Understanding How, Why and for Whom Link Work Interventions Promote Access in Community Healthcare Settings in the United Kingdom: A Realist Review.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2024Review
- A meta-ethnography of the factors that shape link workers' experiences of social prescribing.BMC medicine · 2024Article
- Speaking the same language - a scoping review to identify the terminology associated with social prescribing.Primary health care research & development · 2023Article
- Implementation and impact of a social prescribing intervention: an ethnographic exploration.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2023Article
- Constituting link working through choice and care: An ethnographic account of front-line social prescribing.Sociology of health & illness · 2023Article
- Implementing a General Practice-Based Link Worker Intervention for People with Multimorbidity During the Covid-19 Pandemic- a Mixed Methods Process Evaluation of the LinkMM RCT.International journal of integrated careArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Link worker social prescribing has become a prominent part of NHS England's personalisation agenda. However, approaches to social prescribing vary, with multiple discourses emerging about the potential of social prescribing and different interpretations of personalisation. The transformational promise of social prescribing is the subject of ongoing debate, whilst the factors that shape the nature of front-line link working practices remain unclear. Based on 11 months of in-depth ethnographic research with link workers delivering social prescribing, we show how link workers' practices were shaped by the context of the intervention and how individual link workers navigated varied understandings of social prescribing. Following the work of Mol, we show how link workers drew differentially on the interacting logics of choice and care and trace a multiplicity in front-line link working practices within a single intervention. However, over time, it appeared that a logic of choice was becoming increasingly dominant, making it harder to deliver practices that aligned with a logic of care. We conclude that interpreting personalisation through a logic of choice could potentially undermine link working practices that privilege care whilst obscuring the need for wider investment in health care systems and the social determinants of health.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.