Dementia is a complex medical condition that poses significant challenges to healthcare systems and support services. People living with dementia (PLWD) and their carers experience complex needs often exacerbated by social isolation and challenges in accessing support. Social prescribing (SP) seeks to enable PLWD and their carers to access community and voluntary sector resources to support them address such needs. Existing research, however, does not describe what SP interventions are currently in place in dementia care. Little is known about the needs these interventions are designed to address, the reasons that lead PLWD and their carers to participate in them, their effectiveness and the extent to which they could increase positive health outcomes if adopted and how.

A complex intervention systematic review of SP for PLWD and/or their carers will be conducted using an iterative logic model approach. Six electronic (MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Scopus and Cochrane/CENTRAL) and two grey literature databases (EThOS and CORE) were searched for publications between 1 January 2003 and June 2023, supplemented by handsearching of reference lists of included studies. Study selection, data extraction and risk of bias assessment, using Gough’s Weight of Evidence Framework, will be independently performed by two reviewers. A narrative approach will be employed to synthesise and report quantitative and qualitative data. Reporting will be informed by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Complex Interventions extension statement and checklist.

No ethical approval is required due to this systematic review operating only with secondary sources. Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations and meetings with key stakeholders including healthcare professionals, patient and carer groups, community organisations (eg, the Social Prescribing Network and the Evidence Collaborative at the National Academy for Social Prescribing), policymakers and funding bodies.

CRD42023428625.

Multimorbidity is defined as the presence of two or more chronic diseases. Co-occurring diseases can have synergistic negative effects, and are associated with significant impacts on individual health outcomes and healthcare systems. However, the specific effects of diseases in combination will vary between different diseases. Identifying which diseases are most likely to co-occur in multimorbidity is an important step towards population health assessment and development of policies to prevent and manage multimorbidity more effectively and efficiently. The goal of this project is to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies of disease clustering in multimorbidity, in order to identify multimorbid disease clusters and test their stability.

We will review data from studies of multimorbidity that have used data clustering methodologies to reveal patterns of disease co-occurrence. We propose a network-based meta-analytic approach to perform meta-clustering on a select list of chronic diseases that are identified as priorities for multimorbidity research. We will assess the stability of obtained disease clusters across the research literature to date, in order to evaluate the strength of evidence for specific disease patterns in multimorbidity.

This study does not require ethics approval as the work is based on published research studies. The study findings will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and disseminated through conference presentations and meetings with knowledge users in health systems and public health spheres.

CRD42023411249.