Health system lessons from community practice: a qualitative study rethinking the role of social prescribing for refugee populations

Based on practitioner perspectives, community-led refugee projects offer important lessons for social prescribing: the importance of trauma-informed practice, cultural safety, relational outcomes, and sustained accompaniment. Findings suggest that for social prescribing to be effective and safe for refugee populations, systemic adaptations may be needed, including: long-term funding, prescriber training in trauma and asylum contexts, improved service mapping, and evaluation frameworks valuing relational outcomes. These insights require validation through research with refugee populations to establish whether identified challenges and harms manifest as described.