Social prescribing is an approach that aims to improve health and well-being. It connects individuals to non-clinical services and supports that address social needs, such as those related to loneliness, housing instability and mental health. At the person level, social prescribing can give individuals the knowledge, skills, motivation and confidence to manage their own health and well-being. At the society level, it can facilitate greater collaboration across health, social, and community sectors to promote integrated care and move beyond the traditional biomedical model of health. While the term social prescribing was first popularised in the UK, this practice has become more prevalent and widely publicised internationally over the last decade. This paper aims to illuminate the ways social prescribing has been conceptualised and implemented across 17 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America. We draw from the ‘Beyond the Building Blocks’ framework to describe the essential inputs for adopting social prescribing into policy and practice, related to service delivery; social determinants and household production of health; workforce; leadership and governance; financing, community organisations and societal partnerships; health technology; and information, learning and accountability. Cross-cutting lessons can inform country and regional efforts to tailor social prescribing models to best support local needs.

Whether cognitive decline is related to a higher risk of death independent of the initial cognitive function is inconclusive. Evidence of the association between cognitive decline and mortality among Chinese older people is limited. We aimed to examine whether cognitive decline, assessed by the rate of decrease in the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score, was associated with mortality independent of initial cognitive function (baseline MMSE score) among Chinese older people. We established two successive and non-overlapping cohorts of older adults nested within the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS), an ongoing, open, community-based cohort survey conducted every 2–3 years. Cognitive function was measured using the Chinese version of the MMSE. A total of 11,732 older adults who completed two consecutive cognitive function examinations were included and followed for 3 years. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to examine the association of cognitive decline with mortality after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, health behaviours, comorbidities and initial cognitive function. The mean age was 82.5 years old, and 44.9% (5264/11732) of participants were men. After adjusting for baseline MMSE scores and other covariates, the rate of change in MMSE scores over 3 years was monotonically and positively associated with subsequent 3-year mortality. Compared to those with stable cognitive function, participants with rapid cognitive decline (decline faster than average, a reduction of MMSE scores > 1.62 points/year) had a 75% higher risk of death (hazard ratio = 1.75, 95% confidence interval 1.57–1.95). The association between cognitive decline and mortality was stronger among relatively younger Chinese older people (aged 65–79 years versus 80 years and over) and those with normal cognitive function at baseline (MMSE scores ≥ 24 versus < 24 points), respectively, but did not differ by cohort and sex. Faster cognitive decline was associated with higher mortality independent of initial cognitive function, especially among those aged 65–79 years and those with normal cognitive function at baseline. The association was consistent across two successive cohorts. Our findings indicate the practical significance of monitoring cognitive change in older adults.

Cognitive impairment, functional decline, and behavioral symptoms that characterize Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are associated with perturbations of the neuronal network. The typical electroencephalographic (EEG) features in AD patients are increased delta or theta rhythm and decreased alpha or beta rhythm activities. However, considering the role of cross-frequency couplings in cognition, the alternation of cross-frequency couplings in AD patients is still obscure. This study aims to explore the interaction dynamics between different EEG oscillations in AD patients. We recorded the resting eye-closed EEG signals in 8 AD patients and 12 healthy volunteers. By analyzing the wavelet power spectrum and bicoherence of EEG, we found enhanced gamma rhythm power in AD patients in addition to the increased delta and decreased alpha power. Furthermore, an enhancement of the cross-frequency coupling strength between the beta/gamma and low-frequency bands was observed in AD patients compared to healthy controls. We propose that the pathological increase of ongoing gamma-band power might result from the disruption of the GABAergic interneuron network in AD patients. Furthermore, the cross-frequency overcouplings, which reflect the enhanced synchronization, might indicate the attenuated complexity of the neuronal network, and AD patients have to use more neural resources to maintain the resting brain state. Overall, our findings provide new evidence of the disturbance of the brain oscillation network in AD and further deepen our understanding of the central mechanisms of AD.

Objective:To compare and validate neurocognitive tests in the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) for the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), and to identify appropriate tests to be administered in future waves of CHARLS.Methods:We recruited 825 individuals from the CHARLS sample and 766 subjects from hospitals in six provinces and cities in China. All participants were administered the HCAP-neurocognitive tests, and their informants were interviewed regarding the respondents’ functional status. Trained clinicians administered the Clinical Dementia Rating scale (CDR) to assess the respondents’ cognitive status independently.Results:The testing protocol took an average of 58 minutes to complete. Refusal rates for tests of general cognition, episodic memory, and language were less than 10%. All neurocognitive test scores significantly correlated with the CDR global score (correlation coefficients ranged from 0.139 to 0.641). The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) - telephone interview for cognitive status (TICS), community screening instrument for dementia (CSI-D) for respondent, episodic memory and language tests each accounted for more than 20% of the variance in global CDR score (p < 0.001) in bivariate tests. In the CHARLS subsample, age and education were associated with neuropsychological performance across most cognitive domains, and with functional status.Conclusion:A brief set of the CHARLS-HCAP neurocognitive tests are feasible and valid to be used in the CHARLS sample and hospital samples. It could be applied in the future waves of the CHARLS study, and it allows estimating the prevalence of dementia in China through the population-based CHARLS.