Eleven defining trends. Five programmes. Six resources. Thirty-plus countries. One mission: transforming health through prevention, social prescribing, and innovation.
“We built WHIS because we believed that the future of health would be decided in communities, not hospitals. Every summit we have hosted, every programme we have launched, every country we have entered has confirmed that belief. Social prescribing is not an idea whose time is coming. It is an idea whose time is now.” Gareth Presch, Founder, CEO, World Health Innovation Summit, CEO, Global Social Prescribing Alliance
Value-based healthcare is no longer a niche concept argued over in health economics journals. It is the organising principle around which health systems, researchers, policymakers, and now major corporations are aligning their strategies, their investments, and their measurement frameworks. The question is no longer whether healthcare must change — it must — but how, and who leads.
World Health Innovation Summit CIC and the Global Social Prescribing Alliance (GSPA) have been answering that question in practice for years through summits across 30+ countries, through WHISKids, WHISatWork, WHISSeniors, WHISGreen, and WHISTech, and through six flagship GSPA resources that together constitute one of the most comprehensive community health ecosystems in the world. WHIS is not watching the future of value-based healthcare arrive. We are helping to build it.
“The old system treats symptoms. The new one designs for thriving. The shift from ‘patient’ to ‘person’ — from ‘treatment’ to ‘health-ing’ — is not a trend. It is an evolution. And it is long overdue.” Ushma Issar, Co-Founder & CEO, Global Lead for Volunteer Engagement, World Health Innovation Summit CIC
Eleven Defining Trends — Named in Our Own Language
These are not academic categories borrowed from elsewhere. They are the lived realities that WHIS and GSPA programmes, resources, and summits are already addressing. We have named them accordingly.
1. Technology That Serves People Responsible innovation at the heart of community health
2. Proof That Prevention Works Social prescribing as evidence in action
3. Paying for Outcomes, Not Appointments Social prescribing as value-based healthcare in action
4. Invest Upstream or Pay Downstream Prevention as the most cost-effective medicine
5. Community Is the Innovation Community health as the innovation frontier
6. Health Starts With a Conversation Putting people at the heart of health
7. Evidence for Everyone Democratising the science of what works
8. Assess the Full Value of Health Building pathways fit for community health innovation
9. Measure What Makes Life Worth Living Measuring what actually matters
10. Digital Tools, Human Connections Technology in the service of community
11. Finance the Future of Prevention Outcome-based payments and social impact bonds as the financial architecture for value-based community health
We Don’t Just Advocate. We Demonstrate.
Every WHIS summit is a proof of concept bringing together policymakers, clinicians, investors, innovators, and community leaders to co-create solutions that translate into action on the ground. GSPA summits have directly informed national social prescribing policies, shaped international health frameworks, and connected communities across Ireland, the UK, India, the USA, Italy, Portugal, Argentina, and beyond.
Through our summits, WHIS has demonstrated four things that matter profoundly to the future of value-based healthcare:
Prevention works and is measurable. Community-based preventive health generates quantifiable improvements in wellbeing, reductions in avoidable healthcare use, and positive return on investment.
Cross-sector collaboration is the engine of health innovation. The most powerful health solutions emerge at the intersections between health systems, governments, corporations, investors, and communities — not within any single one.
Social prescribing scales. Through GSPA’s 30+ country network, WHIS has demonstrated that social prescribing is a globally applicable model that adapts to diverse cultural and health system contexts while maintaining its essential human-centred character.
Outcome-based accountability is achievable. The GSPA Evaluation Toolkit has demonstrated that community health interventions can be measured, compared, and evaluated to the standard that commissioners, investors, and HTA bodies require.
Three Trends in Focus
Invest Upstream or Pay Downstream
The affordability debate in healthcare extends far beyond pharmaceutical pricing. The full cost of preventable ill health encompasses lost productivity, social care expenditure, avoidable emergency admissions, and the profound personal costs of conditions that upstream community interventions could address. Investing in prevention is not a cost — it is the most cost-effective strategy available to health systems under pressure.
WHISatWork addresses the economic productivity cost of poor workforce mental health. WHISSeniors reduces the healthcare costs of preventable falls and loss of independence. WHISKids addresses the lifetime cost trajectory of childhood mental health conditions left unaddressed. WHISGreen builds the evidence that ecological restoration is investment in long-term population wellbeing. Our GSPA resource Prevention as an Investable Asset Class (2026) makes this case rigorously and quantifiably.
Health Starts With a Conversation
Social prescribing begins with a conversation, not a prescription — co-designed with the individual, evaluated by outcomes that matter to the person, and delivered by link workers who hold relationships, not protocols, at the centre of their practice. The eight types of social prescribing deployed across GSPA’s global network — Green, Blue, Arts and Culture, Physical Activity, Social and Community, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Work and Skills, and Practical Support — are chosen by and with the individual. This is patient centricity in its most complete form.
Finance the Future of Prevention
Outcome-based payments and social impact bonds are the financial architecture that makes prevention as an investable asset class a reality. Where traditional healthcare funding pays for inputs — GP appointments, prescriptions, hospital beds — outcome-based payment models pay for results: reduced hospital admissions, improved mental health scores, people returning to work, older adults remaining independent at home.
WHIS and GSPA are natural partners for governments, health systems, impact investors, and corporations seeking to design and fund outcome-based community health programmes. Prevention as an Investable Asset Class (2026) and the GSPA Evaluation Toolkit provide the investment case and the measurement infrastructure that these contracts require.
“The future of value-based healthcare will be decided in communities, not clinics. Social prescribing and community activation are not peripheral to health systems they are their foundation. The Sociedade Portuguesa de Literacia em Saúde has demonstrated this through an integrated, interdisciplinary model that brings together health, education, social sciences, communication, and public policy to generate real impact. Through programmes in health literacy, community activation, citizen engagement, youth participation, and wellbeing promotion, SPLS builds the bridges between people, services, and institutions that no clinical intervention can build alone. This is what paying for outcomes looks like in practice: empowered communities, informed citizens, resilient societies and health systems that finally work for everyone.” Cristina Vaz de Almeida, President, Sociedade Portuguesa de Literacia em Saúde (SPLS)
Five Programmes. Every Life Stage.
WHIS delivers five flagship programmes covering every major population group and life stage, forming a comprehensive whole-life approach to preventive health.
🧒** WHISKid**s — Promoting mental health and wellbeing for children and young people worldwide. Globally, 1 in 7 young people (10–19 years) experiences a mental disorder (WHO). WHISKids delivers community-based, school-linked mental health programmes, early intervention, peer support, and resilience-building — reaching young people before crisis point.
💼** WHISatWor**k — From Surviving to Thriving. Enhancing workforce wellbeing and productivity through stress management and preventive health strategies. Reduces sickness absence, improves productivity, and builds cultures of health and belonging.
🧓** WHISSenior**s — Turning Ageing Into Opportunity. Supporting healthy ageing through falls prevention, social connection, and community-based care — reducing avoidable hospital admissions, loneliness, and frailty while building purpose, dignity, and independence in later life.
🌿** WHISGree**n — Restoring balance to the environment through energy, water, and waste innovation. Environmental health and human health are inseparable — ecological restoration is investment in long-term population wellbeing.
💡** WHISTec**h — Transforming health and wellbeing through digital innovation and AI. The WHIS Health and Wellbeing App offers personalised activities for all ages, community connection, and social prescribing resources — technology in the service of community, not replacing it.
Resources. A Complete Ecosystem.
The Global Social Prescribing Alliance has developed flagship resources freely available and actively used by governments, health systems, and practitioners across 30+ countries.
- Global Playbook for Social Prescribing— International standards, implementation models, and evidence frameworks used by governments and health systems worldwide.
- Artificial Intelligence in Digital Health and Social Prescribing** (2026)** — GSPA’s definitive guidance on responsible AI integration within social prescribing pathways.
- Global Social Prescribing Workforce Development & Opportunities** (2026)** — Frameworks for training and sustaining the global social prescribing workforce from link workers to strategic leaders.
- Prevention as an Investable Asset Class** (2026)** — The economic and investment case for social prescribing with monetised evidence of return on investment.
- Global Social Prescribing Alliance Student Movement Playbook 2026 — Engaging the next generation of health professionals in building the evidence base and workforce for community health.
“We have recognised for many years that whilst medicine and modern healthcare is one of our greatest assets as humanity, we also need to acknowledge that health does not start in a hospital. We know that social factors represent the biggest challenges for the future in creating a healthy world and social problems need a social not a biomedical solution.” James Sanderson, Chair, GSPA
Join the Movement
The future of healthcare is value-based, preventive, and community-powered and it is already happening.
Social prescribing is not a fringe innovation. It is not a complementary add-on. It is the future of healthcare and through WHIS and GSPA, the infrastructure to deliver it at scale already exists.
Official publication: Friday 17th April - register to receive a copy.