Evaluating the Effectiveness of Rural Digital Social Prescribing in Korea: Protocol for a Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND: The UK National Health Service (NHS) has introduced a digital social prescribing (DSP) system to improve the mental health of the aging population. In Korea, an ongoing pilot social prescribing project has been implemented for older individuals in rural areas since 2019. OBJECTIVE: This research aims to develop a DSP program and to evaluate the effectiveness of the digital platform in rural areas of Korea. METHODS: This study was designed as a prospective cohort method for the development and effectiveness evaluation of rural DSP in Korea. The study divided participants into four groups. Group 1 will continuously implement the existing social prescribing program, group 2 implemented the existing social prescribing program but was switched to DSP in 2023, group 3 newly started the DSP, and the remaining group is the control. The research area of this study is Gangwon Province in Korea. The study is being conducted in Wonju, Chuncheon, and Gangneung. This study will use indicators to measure depression, anxiety, loneliness, cognitive function, and digital literacy. In the future, the interventions will implement the digital platform and the Music Story Telling program. This study will evaluate the effectiveness of DSP using difference-in-differences regression and cost-benefit analysis. RESULTS: This study was approved for funding from the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education in October 2022. The results of the data analysis are expected to be available in September 2023. CONCLUSIONS: The platform will be spread to rural areas in Korea and will serve as the foundation for effectively managing the feelings of solitude and depression among older individuals. This study will provide vital evidence for disseminating DSP in Asian countries such as Japan, China, Singapore, and Taiwan as well as for studying DSP in Korea. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/46371.

Global Trends in Social Prescribing: Web-Based Crawling Approach.

BACKGROUND: Social loneliness is a prevalent issue in industrialized countries that can lead to adverse health outcomes, including a 26% increased risk of premature mortality, coronary heart disease, stroke, depression, cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer disease. The United Kingdom has implemented a strategy to address loneliness, including social prescribing-a health care model where physicians prescribe nonpharmacological interventions to tackle social loneliness. However, there is a need for evidence-based plans for global social prescribing dissemination. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to identify global trends in social prescribing from 2018. To this end, we intend to collect and analyze words related to social prescribing worldwide and evaluate various trends of related words by classifying the core areas of social prescribing. METHODS: Google's searchable data were collected to analyze web-based data related to social prescribing. With the help of web crawling, 3796 news items were collected for the 5-year period from 2018 to 2022. Key topics were selected to identify keywords for each major topic related to social prescribing. The topics were grouped into 4 categories, namely Healthy, Program, Governance, and Target, and keywords for each topic were selected thereafter. Text mining was used to determine the importance of words collected from new data. RESULTS: Word clouds were generated for words related to social prescribing, which collected 3796 words from Google News databases, including 128 in 2018, 432 in 2019, 566 in 2020, 748 in 2021, and 1922 in 2022, increasing nearly 15-fold between 2018 and 2022 (5 years). Words such as health, prescribing, and GPs (general practitioners) were the highest in terms of frequency in the list for all the years. Between 2020 and 2021, COVID, gardening, and UK were found to be highly related words. In 2022, NHS (National Health Service) and UK ranked high. This dissertation examines social prescribing-related term frequency and classification (2018-2022) in Healthy, Program, Governance, and Target categories. Key findings include increased "Healthy" terms from 2020, "gardening" prominence in "Program," "community" growth across categories, and "Target" term spikes in 2021. CONCLUSIONS: This study's discussion highlights four key aspects: (1) the "Healthy" category trends emphasize mental health, cancer, and sleep; (2) the "Program" category prioritizes gardening, community, home-schooling, and digital initiatives; (3) "Governance" underscores the significance of community resources in social prescribing implementation; and (4) "Target" focuses on 4 main groups: individuals with long-term conditions, low-level mental health issues, social isolation, or complex social needs impacting well-being. Social prescribing is gaining global acceptance and is becoming a global national policy, as the world is witnessing a sharp rise in the aging population, noncontagious diseases, and mental health problems. A successful and sustainable model of social prescribing can be achieved by introducing social prescribing schemes based on the understanding of roles and the impact of multisectoral partnerships.

Satisfaction with the walking-related environment during COVID-19 in South Korea.

This study aimed to examine the satisfaction level differences between urban and rural areas with regard to their walking environment during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea. This online cross-sectional research was conducted using a mobile health application. Overall, 1,032 local residents who participated in the mobile healthcare program of a public health center were classified as being from either urban (n = 481, 46.6%) or rural areas (n = 551, 53.4%) for the purpose of this study. The Walkability Checklist, which includes sociodemographic information, was employed using a Chi-square test and a multivariate logistic regression to investigate whether or not the participants were satisfied with the environmental factors associated with walking. It was found that both urban and rural areas were more likely to be unsatisfied with walking comfort (adjusted OR: 24.472, 95% CI: 14.937-40.096). Regarding the walking comfort aspects of the walking environment, urban residents chose poor landscape ("needed more grass, flowers, or trees"; aOR: 13.561, 95% CI: 3.619-50.823) as their primary dissatisfaction, and rural residents chose messy streets ("dirty, lots of litter or trash"; aOR: 29.045, 95% CI: 6.202-136.015). Compared with urban residents, rural residents were more discontented with the walking environment. Thus, to promote walking activities at the community level, it is necessary to focus on walking comfort, and implement efforts related to environmental beautification.