Good Faith Partnership and NASP host round table with senior faith and health representatives
On 10 December, Good Faith Partnership and the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) hosted a round table discussion at the Southbank Centre to discuss how faith groups can support the NHS and Neighbourhood Health plans to improve people’s wellbeing.
This was the third round table in a series of events on faith and social prescribing over the past two years and follows the publication in January 2025 of Good Faith and Theos’s report, ‘Creating a Neighbourhood Health Service: the role of churches and faith groups in social prescribing’. The round table brought together leaders from the five major faith groups in the UK alongside representatives from the Department for Health and Social Care, the NHS, the NHS Confederation and Yusuf Patel MBE who was appointed Strategic Faith and Social Prescribing Lead at NASP in September 2025.
Also present was Professor Sir Sam Everington OBE, NHS Board Member, who pioneered social prescribing at his practice in Bromley by Bow in the 1990s.
The purpose of the meeting was to bring together leaders from the worlds of faith and social prescribing to discuss how to implement the recommendations of the January report and to give Yusuf strategic direction on priorities.
Simon Morioka, Joint Chief Executive, PPL, talked about what faith groups can offer neighbourhood health initiatives. There were case studies about faith in action from Geetha Maheshwaran of Shree Ghanapathy Temple and Nigel Adams of The Christian Community Hub Movement.
Some of the conversation focussed on case studies and evidence for the effectiveness of social prescribing, and there were detailed discussions on how faith groups can maintain their distinctiveness in the provision of socially prescribed services for people’s wellbeing.
Esther Platt, Senior Consultant for Good Faith Partnership, who has taken a lead on Good Faith’s work promoting faith groups within social prescribing, said: “We explored the question of how to enable faith groups to partner well with the NHS and to work well together while maintaining the consistency and expertise they have when it comes to safeguarding people’s wellbeing.”
Following this round table, Yusuf will develop a plan to further integrate faith groups and social prescribing, and will work closely with Good Faith Partnership and NASP on implementing top priorities identified in the meeting.