Collaboration between primary care and a voluntary, community sector organisation: Practical guidance from the parkrun practice initiative

Voluntary and community sector organisations are increasing their role in supporting primary care services through 'social prescribing'. parkrun is a charity that delivers free, weekly 5 km events, on a Saturday morning in areas of open space across the UK and globally. In June 2018, parkrun and the Royal College of General Practitioners launched an initiative to encourage the linking of general practitioner practices and local parkrun events. This study investigates the interaction between parkrun events and practices in order to understand why and how parkrun events' promote such linkage, and their experiences of doing so. Its purpose was to provide practical recommendations for developing the parkrun practice initiative and similar collaborations between primary care and voluntary and community sector organisations. An online survey, which included both tick box questions and free text comments was sent to Event Directors for all UK parkrun events and completed by half (322/634, 50.8%). Over two-thirds (225/322; 69.6%) of the event teams were knowingly linked with one or more general practices; and this was generally viewed as having been a positive experience and was motivated by wanting to positively impact on the health and well-being of their community. Challenges centred on the process of initiating contact between parkrun events and practices; the lack of time among parkrun event volunteers to promote the scheme; and the difficulty of clarifying parkrun event and practice responsibilities, including who takes the lead. Practical recommendations include: ensuring clear pathways of communication between event teams and practices (e.g. via a Link Worker or designated person within the practice and/or parkrun event); minimising resource implications and ensuring mutual understanding from practices and parkrun event teams as to expected roles and involvement. Our findings, while focused on the parkrun practice initiative, are likely to have relevance to other collaborations between primary care and voluntary and community sector organisations.