An Evening with Julia Hotz: The Connection Cure

We’re thrilled to welcome Julia Hotz to House of Books & Friends to discuss her new book, The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging.

Julia will be in conversation with Bev Taylor. Following this, there will be a Q&A session. Julia will also be hosting a 5-10 minute interactive audience exercise reflecting on different versions of the book’s central question “What matters to you?”, and then connecting to local “medicine”. The evening will conclude with an opportunity to purchase a signed copy of The Connection Cure.

The event will take place between 6:00pm-8:00pm on Wednesday, 26th June, in store.

Tickets
Book and ticket: £16.99
Ticket only: £5 (redeemable against a copy of the book on the evening)

As always, we have a limited amount of complimentary tickets for this event for anyone who needs it. Please contact us directly at bookworms@houseofbooksandfriends.com or call 07597365380.

About the book 

In this combination of diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery, journalist Julia Hotz helps us discover lasting and life-changing medicine in our own communities.

Traditionally, when we get sick, health care professionals ask, “What’s the matter with you?” But around the world, teams of doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers have started to flip the script, asking “What matters to you?” Instead of solely pharmaceutical prescriptions, they offer ‘social prescriptions’-referrals to community activities and resources, like photography classes, gardening groups, and volunteering gigs. The results speak for themselves. Science shows that social prescribing is effective for treating symptoms of the modern world’s most common ailments-depression, ADHD, addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, dementia, diabetes, and loneliness.

As health care’s de facto cycle of “diagnose-treat-repeat” reaches a breaking point, social prescribing has also proven to reduce patient wait times, lower hospitalization rates, save money, and reverse health worker burnout. And as a general sense of unwellness plagues more of us, social prescriptions can help us feel healthier than we’ve felt in years. As Hotz tours the globe to investigate the spread of social prescribing to over thirty countries, she meets people personifying its revolutionary potential: an aspiring novelist whose art workshop helps her cope with trauma symptoms and rediscover her joy; a policy researcher whose swimming course helps her taper off antidepressants and feel excited to wake up in the morning; an army vet whose phone conversations help him form his only true friendship; and dozens more.

The success stories she finds bring a long-known theory to life: if we can change our environment, we can change our health. By reconnecting to what matters to us, we can all start to feel better.

About the author

Julia Hotz is a solutions-focused journalist and author of THE CONNECTION CURE. After studying sociology at the University of Cambridge, she joined the Solutions Journalism Network, where she helps other journalists rigorously report on what’s working to solve today’s biggest problems.

Before becoming a journalist, Julia worked as a teacher, bartender, pizza server, and summer camp “forest ranger” (long story). She enjoys hiking up mountains, riling up dance floors, running around parks, biking around New York, budget traveling around the world, and building the ‘longest road’ around Catan.

About Bev Taylor

Bev Taylor set up the national social prescribing programme at NHS England between 2015-19, before being seconded to set up the national academy for social prescribing. Bev has worked alongside Manchester Camerata since 2022, helping to develop a Music Champions programme. Her new role will be to nurture a national music and dementia learning network, as part of Camerata’s Centre of Excellence for music and dementia.