We’re delighted to be working with Dr Sara Calderón-Larrañaga and Queen Mary’s Centre for Primary Care and Mental Health to design a short publication that communicates the benefits and challenges of social prescribing for people with late onset diabetes in Tower Hamlets.

The work will be designed to give a voice to all of the people involved in the study including patients, practitioners and social enterprises and aims to increase the awareness, acceptance and adoption of social prescribing in NHS primary care.

Tower Hamlets is a city of two halves, with Canary Wharf’s corporate towers looking down on food banks in a borough where many people live parallel lives. So, while bankers in Canary Wharf earn on average £850,000 per year, many people in this study rely on public services, charity and the power of family and community to get by.

Despite these extremes, we hope that the stories of mutual support that are being embedded in local NHS services will show that new models of care can provide real benefits that go beyond sticking plasters and make a real difference to people’s lives.