Evidence base
UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
A Connected Society: A Strategy for Tackling Loneliness
What it found
This 2018 strategy from the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport was the first national loneliness strategy published by any government. It committed to embedding loneliness measurement into Office for National Statistics data collection and funded social prescribing as a delivery mechanism.
Why it matters for practice
As a policy document rather than an evaluation, it establishes government commitment and infrastructure rather than evidence of impact; readers assessing social prescribing outcomes should look elsewhere for that, and treat this as the origin point of the measurement and funding architecture that later work builds on.