Compassionate communities as the foundation of the next healthcare revolution

• Published in: Lifestyle medicine (Hoboken, N.J.) Vol. 4; no. 4
• Main Authors: Abel, Julian, Wood, Thomas R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.10.2023; Wiley
• Subjects: Community development; Disease; Evidence-based medicine; Lifestyles; Medical research; Medicine; Mortality; prevention; Public health; quality of life; relationships; social/emotional support; well‐being
• ISSN: 2688-3740; 2688-3740
• DOI: 10.1002/lim2.89

The paper of Professor Fraser Birrell makes the point that treating people individually loses the benefit of building social relationships and advocates for building social relationships into routine treatment plans for chronic disease management through group consultations. [...]they should be treated with equal seriousness from a public health perspective. Holt-Lunstad went on to demonstrate that good social relationships are protective and that poor ones have a profoundly negative impact on health, in her meta-analysis of 2015 showing the negative impacts on mortality. The three aspects of social connection emerged from measurement approaches across scientific disciplines that generally converge to tap into (a) the need for humans to have regular contact with a variety of people in their lives (structural), (b) people they can rely upon to meet various needs and goals (functional) and (c) relationships and interactions that are positive (quality). [...]the multifaceted construct of social connection encompasses a range of experiences from protective to those that