What if your doctor prescribed a cityHUNT adventure instead of another pill? What if the cure for your team’s burnout was an urban scavenger hunt, not medication? This isn’t some far-fetched fantasy. It’s called social prescribing, and it’s gaining serious traction in healthcare.
A CNN article highlighted this revolutionary approach, explaining how “social prescriptions are health care referrals for activities and resources in your community” rather than just medications. The piece explored how healthcare providers are prescribing everything from nature walks to art classes to combat the epidemic of loneliness affecting American workers.
But here’s where it gets interesting: cityHUNT has been creating these exact “social prescriptions” for over 24 years, long before the medical community had a name for it. What we call team building adventures, doctors are now recognizing as legitimate medicine.
Table of Contents
Five Pillars
According to the CNN article and social prescribing research, there are five core pillars that make these “prescriptions” so effective: movement, nature, art, service and belonging. These aren’t just nice extras – they’re requirements for human health.
Here’s why each pillar matters:
- Movement: releases feel-good brain chemicals and improves memory. Exercise helps treat depression, stress, anxiety and type 2 diabetes just as effectively as many medications.
- Nature: restores your attention and focus. Some studies show time outdoors can improve concentration as much as ADHD medication.
- Art: helps process tough emotions and reduces anxiety. Humans have used creative expression to cope with difficult feelings since the beginning of time.
- Service: gives you purpose beyond yourself. The CNN article shared Akeela’s story – when chronic pain forced her to quit her job, volunteering for a children’s charity helped reduce her pain more than pills and surgeries.
- Belonging: meets our deepest survival need for community. For thousands of years, humans survived in groups. We had roles in our communities. Now many of us live isolated lives, which literally hurts our health.
Social prescribing works because it addresses these fundamental human needs through community activities instead of just treating symptoms with medication.
Why It Works
The science backs this up. Exercise helps treat depression, stress, anxiety and type 2 diabetes. Time in nature can improve focus as much as ADHD medication. Art reduces anxiety and trauma symptoms.
Take Akeela’s story from the research. When chronic back pain forced her to quit her caretaking job, she became deeply depressed. She tried every pill and surgery doctors recommended. Some helped a little.
But what really turned things around was volunteering for a children’s health charity. By focusing on helping others instead of her pain, her symptoms actually got better. That’s the power of social connection as medicine.
The cityHUNT Prescription
Here’s where cityHUNT becomes the perfect social prescription. For over 24 years, we’ve been creating experiences that naturally combine all five pillars without participants even realizing they’re getting “medicine.”
When doctors prescribe a cityHUNT team building adventure, they’re prescribing:
- Movement – Teams walk 2-3 miles exploring their city
- Nature – Hunts take place outdoors in parks, neighborhoods, and urban green spaces
- Art – Creative challenges involve photography, performance, and problem-solving
- Service – Teams interact with strangers, help community members, and spread positivity
- Belonging – Small groups of 4-6 people bond through shared challenges and celebration
What makes cityHUNT especially powerful as a social prescription is that it’s designed for corporate wellness programs. Progressive doctors and HR leaders could easily partner to prescribe cityHUNT adventures for teams struggling with burnout, isolation, or low morale.
Imagine getting a prescription that reads: “Take one cityHUNT team adventure monthly. Refillable for improved workplace culture.”
Perfect Medicine
What makes cityHUNT so effective as social medicine isn’t just that it hits all five pillars – it’s how we’ve perfected the delivery over 24 years.
Our adventures create flow states where time disappears and people become fully present. We design challenges that are engaging for different personality types, from extroverts who love singing to strangers to introverts who prefer solving puzzles.
Unlike traditional team building that can feel forced, cityHUNT participants forget they’re in a “wellness activity.” They’re just having fun, which is exactly when the healing happens.
We’ve also solved the scale problem that makes most social prescriptions impractical for large organizations. While a doctor might struggle to prescribe pottery classes for 500 employees, cityHUNT can create unified experiences for thousands of people simultaneously.
Healthcare Integration
Forward-thinking doctors are already exploring partnerships with companies like cityHUNT for corporate wellness programs.
Here’s how it could work:
- For Occupational Health Physicians: Instead of just treating workplace stress and burnout with medication, prescribe monthly cityHUNT adventures for teams. Track improvements in employee satisfaction, sick days, and team cohesion.
- For Corporate Wellness Programs: Partner with local doctors to create “social prescribing” packages. Employees struggling with anxiety, depression, or isolation get referred to structured cityHUNT experiences designed for therapeutic benefit.
- For Employee Assistance Programs: Add cityHUNT team adventures as a preventive mental health intervention. Instead of waiting for crisis intervention, proactively prescribe connection and play.
The beauty of prescribing cityHUNT is that it addresses both individual wellness and team dynamics simultaneously. You’re not just treating one person – you’re improving the entire workplace ecosystem.
Real Connection
cityHUNT creates the three-layered connection that’s essential for healing: connection with yourself, with other people, and with the world around you.
During our adventures, participants often have moments of self-discovery as they step outside comfort zones. Teams bond through shared challenges and silly moments. And everyone connects with their city in new ways, seeing familiar places through fresh eyes.
Quality connection provides feelings of inclusion, being seen and affirmed for who you are, and a true sense of belonging. cityHUNT creates these feelings naturally through gameplay rather than forced interaction.
This is why our team building experiences work so well – they’re designed around authentic connection rather than artificial team building exercises.
Corporate Applications
Smart companies are already catching on to this. They’re realizing that traditional team building often falls flat because it focuses on productivity instead of play and genuine connection.
The most effective team building experiences combine all five pillars of social prescribing naturally. When you get teams moving through cities, solving creative challenges together, and connecting with strangers, you’re essentially delivering medicine disguised as fun.
These experiences work because they’re designed around the same flow principles that make social prescribing effective – challenging enough to be engaging, collaborative enough to build bonds, and playful enough to remind adults how to have fun together.
Beyond Health
This approach could solve bigger problems too. People who lack belonging often get pulled into harmful extremist groups. Stories from former conspiracy theory believers often include depression, social isolation, loneliness and lack of belonging leading up to getting sucked in.
When we don’t provide healthy spaces for connection, people find belonging in unhealthy places. Social prescribing creates positive alternatives.
The Future
cityHUNT represents the future of social prescribing in corporate America. We’ve already proven that adventure-based team building improves workplace culture, reduces turnover, and boosts employee satisfaction.
Now imagine if doctors could prescribe these experiences as preventive medicine. Instead of waiting for burnout to require medical intervention, teams get regular “doses” of playfulness, connection, and flow.
The economics make perfect sense. A cityHUNT adventure costs less than a single therapy session but benefits entire teams. Companies save on healthcare costs while employees get medicine that actually feels good to take.
We’re ready to partner with progressive healthcare providers who want to prescribe something better than pills. Our effortless planning process makes it easy for doctors to refer patients to structured wellness experiences that actually work.
Conclusion
Social prescribing recognizes what cityHUNT has known for 24 years: humans need community, purpose, and play to thrive. When doctors start treating workplace isolation like a medical condition and prescribing team adventures like medicine, real healing begins.
The evidence is clear that cityHUNT adventures naturally combine all five pillars of social prescribing – movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. We’ve perfected the delivery method that makes this medicine both effective and enjoyable. Maybe it’s time doctors started prescribing what actually works.Ready to pioneer social prescribing in your organization? Contact cityHUNT to explore how we can partner with your healthcare providers to prescribe team adventures that heal, connect, and transform workplace culture.
