Looking Beyond Disease: Where Health Is Really Made
For Sónia Dias, improving public health has always meant looking beyond the walls of healthcare institutions. As one of the country’s leading voices in health promotion and social prescribing, Sónia has spent her career exploring how healthcare systems can better address inequality, health promotion and prevention, and well-being.
Her work increasingly focuses on a question she believes health systems can no longer afford to ignore:
How do we keep people healthy, rather than simply treating them when they become ill?
“Health is really not created in hospitals or in clinics. It is much more created in schools, home, workplace, communities and nature environments.”
That perspective has made her a leading advocate for social prescribing in Portugal and an important supporter in the NAT-CARE project, which is helping healthcare professionals explore nature-based approaches to health and well-being.