Meet Dr Feifei Bu, a Principal Research Fellow, in this instalment of the SBB Spotlight! Feifei is an epidemiologist working with social prescribing data sets, cohort studies and electronic patient health records. Read on to learn about her latest work providing the first comprehensive analysis of social prescribing across diverse referral pathways in the UK, as well as what her recent promotion to Principal Research Fellow might mean for the future.
Q: Hello Feifei! One of the key areas that you work on is social prescribing, a fairly new approach that connects people to activities, groups, and services in their community to improve their health and wellbeing. How did you end up working on this topic?
I have always been interested in studying the social determinants of health and health behaviours, which account for 80% of health outcomes combined! Social prescribing is an innovative approach which recognises their importance and addresses people’s medical and non-medical needs in a more integrated and holistic way. It’s also related to my interest in loneliness and social isolation, which is one of the areas that social prescribing works particularly well for. My work on social prescribing started from an NHS England funded project in 2019, which used primary care health records collected by the NHS North West London to look at equity in accessing social prescribing.
Q: Sounds like a fascinating introduction to the topic! And if you look ahead now, what excites you about the future of social prescribing?
I am very excited about a variety of datasets that are or will be made available to us, including the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) primary care health records, social prescribing routine data from our industry partner Access Elemental, as well as clinical trial data from the Wellbeing While Waiting and INACT projects led by our team. These data will allow us to explore an even wider range of important questions related to social prescribing.
Q: So your research involves working with different types of large datasets related to social prescribing – what are some of the challenges and opportunities you face here?
Primary care data has the advantage of large sample sizes and rich medical information, but it is limited to patients who are referred via the GP model only and information on social prescribing is minimal (e.g. they only include information about whether a referral to social prescribing service was made, if social prescribing was offered, and if it was taken up or declined). Working with industrial partners’ data, like Access Elemental, has the advantages of containing diverse referral routes, detailed information across different stages of a social prescribing pathway—not just if social prescribing has happened, but also why and what type of interventions were prescribed. However, Elementa data contain only information post-referral, with limited sociodemographic as well as health and wellbeing measures. Lastly, clinical trial data are invaluable for assessing impacts, but they often have a narrow focus and small sample size.
Q: That’s a lot to consider – how do you tackle the issue of imperfect data in your research?
Unfortunately, none of the above-described data alone will give us a full picture of social prescribing. The key is to identify which data are suitable for a specific research question and to triangulate – use multiple methods – across different data sources whenever possible. And then piece together different evidence in the hope to get a more or less full picture – like the process of doing a jigsaw puzzle.
Q: Great advice. Your latest paper investigated the patterns and predictors of social prescribing referrals – can you share the key things that you learnt?
There have been concerns that social prescribing may be accessed unequally, thus widening existing social and health inequalities. Our study takes the first broad view of different referral pathways, finding that some of the underrepresented groups in primary care (e.g. younger adults, men) are more likely to access social prescribing via non-medical pathways, such as social care, education, charities and so on. This highlights the importance of investing in other diverse referral pathways in addition to the currently predominant GP model. Moreover, our analyses show that only 38% of social prescribing cases resulted in any intervention. This could be related to a shortage in community activities and resources, especially those related to mental health, practical support and social relationships.
Q: You were also recently promoted to Principal Research Fellow, congratulations! What does this mean for your career and your future research plans?
Thank you! Being promoted to Principal Research Fellow is an exciting milestone for me, as it marks both recognition of my contributions in the past and a renewed commitment to advancing my career in the future. This promotion provides a solid foundation for deepening my expertise in quantitative methodology and pursuing grant opportunities more actively. Also, I see this an opportunity to step out my comfort zone of academic research. I look forward to contributing more significantly to the broader academic community, whether through teaching, mentoring, or contributing to departmental and institutional initiatives.
Q: We end the Spotlights with a slightly more personal question! Do you have any arts-based hobbies or interests you like to immerse yourself in during your free time?
As it happens, I do – even before systematically learning their health benefits. I used to do sketching and painting when I was growing up. A newly acquired arts-based hobby of mine is paper cutting.
You can find Feifei on X (formerly Twitter) and read more about our research projects on the topic of social prescribing on our website.