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With social prescribing, hanging out, movement and arts are doctor's order
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of NPR
Posted: December 16th, 2025
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/14/nx-s1-5434386/social-prescrip...
For more than 30 years, Frank Frost worked as a long-distance truck driver. He gained weight and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his 50s. His doctors put him on insulin injections and told him to lose weight and move more. "When l, like most people, failed, they made me feel weak and worthless," says Frost. Then, Frost met a doctor with a completely different approach — one that changed his life. The doctor ... asked Frost about things he enjoyed doing as a kid and discovered he used to love riding a bike. He gave him a prescription for a 10-week cycling course called Pedal Ready for adults getting back into cycling. "I hadn't been on a bike for almost 50 years until I started cycling again," says Frost. What Frost's doctor had done was give him a social prescription, says journalist Julia Hotz. It's the idea of health professionals "literally prescribing you a community activity or resource the same way they'd prescribe you pills or therapies," she explains. The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exposure to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous benefits to physical and mental health. And it all starts with "flipping the script from what's the matter with you to focusing on what matters to you," Hotz says. "What are your activities that you love? What gets you out of bed?" Frost's prescription helped him make friends after years in a solitary profession. And it helped him lose 100 pounds, get his diabetes under control and go off insulin.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing our bodies and healing social division.
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