A prescription for rural isolation: Coffee and community that can build human connections and improve health

Coffee and community can be part of a healthy lifestyle.
(Mercantile photo via RHIH)

Part of rural living's appeal can be its wide open spaces with big skies and swaths of uninhabited land. While people may relish country living, it can be socially isolating and lonely, which isn't a healthy state for most people. In Madison, Minnesota, pop. 1,518, Dr. Hannah Fields, the town's family physician, is experimenting with a new prescription for some of her patients: "Visit the local coffee shop," reports Brendan Stermer for Rural Health Information Hub. Fields told Stermer, “It's as simple as pulling out a piece of scrap paper and writing a prescription for coffee, then texting Kris [the owner of the shop] like, ‘Hey, if someone shows up with this, put it on my tab."

Field's prescription isn't just for coffee -- it's for the community bonds the location offers alongside warm sips. "These interactions, Fields believes, amount to an intangible elixir that is healthier and more invigorating than even the Mercantile's strongest brew: authentic human connection," Stermer explains. "It's a basic — though often unacknowledged — necessity for health."

The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Health Effects of Social Connection and Community was published in May 2023, and it listed human connection “as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter." But hanging out together and connecting has become harder for many Americans.

The 2023 advisory described the problem: “Recent surveys have found that approximately half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, with some of the highest rates among young adults. These estimates and multiple other studies indicate that loneliness and social isolation are more widespread than many of the other major health issues of our day, including smoking (12.5% of U.S. adults), diabetes (14.7%), and obesity (41.9%), and with comparable levels of risk to health and premature death.”

With that kind of health risk on the table, a cup of coffee or tea with other humans might be the cheapest and most effective antidote. "Fields hopes the 2023 Surgeon General's Advisory has opened the door for individuals and providers to reckon with the presence of these issues in their own lives, and in their communities," Stermer reports. "Her referrals to the Mercantile are inspired by a practice, more common in Europe, known as social prescribing. While she has heard promising patient feedback, she emphasized that formal program implementation and evaluation would be needed to draw any firm conclusions."