Presenter(s):

Amy Huey-Ling Shee; Joy Wei-Tung Chiang; Chin-Huang Chen, University College London, China

Abstract

According to United Nations standards, Taiwan is expected to officially become a super-aged society by next year. This demographic shift has intensified health inequalities, especially between urban and rural areas, and exposed limitations in traditional eldercare systems. In this context, community-based care has emerged as a crucial strategy to enhance resilience, social inclusion, and well-being in later life.

While inspired by international ageing frameworks such as the WHO’s Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030) and the UK’s model of social prescribing, Taiwan’s policy evolution is uniquely shaped by its legacy of community-led development. A key foundation for this research is the Japanese concept of ‘community empowerment’, a participatory approach to community building that emphasizes co-creation, local autonomy, and citizen empowerment. Since the 1990s, Taiwan has adopted community empowerment principles to foster bottom-up social innovation, enabling communities to design services based on their lived experiences. This offers fertile ground for developing a localized social prescribing model that aligns with Taiwan’s cultural and historical contexts.

This paper applies a tri-axial analytical framework—the XYZ model to explore the evolution of community-centered health interventions in the UK and Taiwan. The X-axis traces each country’s policy trajectory: the UK’s integration of social prescribing into its national healthcare system versus Taiwan’s longstanding investment in community empowerment since the 1990s. Taiwan’s approach, inspired in part by Japan’s community empowerment model, emphasizes local autonomy, co-creation, and citizen-led social innovation. These efforts laid fertile ground for developing a culturally embedded version of social prescribing. The Y-axis examines institutional mechanisms and implementation practices. The Z-axis highlights the lived outcomes and social impact of these systems, including empowerment, renewed cultural identity, and the adaptation of services to local needs.

This cross-national analysis reveals a converging recognition of community as the foundation for sustainable ageing policy. Rather than importing foreign models, Taiwan is well-positioned to build on its existing cultural infrastructure and social innovation legacy to create a localized version of social prescribing. With the government’s recent push toward Long-Term Care 3.0, this moment offers a timely opportunity to embed community-based, culturally responsive care into the heart of national ageing policy.

Bio(s):

Bio of Amy HL Shee

Professor Amy Huey-Ling SHEE is a socio-legal scholar and a professor of law in the National Chung-Cheng University (Taiwan). She obtained her LLM at LSE (London) and PhD at Warwick University (UK). Prof. Shee conducts interdisciplinary research and teaching on law and society, human rights, sustainable development and global-localisation studies, and thus devoted to research, teaching and social campaigns towards grass-root realisation of human dignity and rights. She has been active in organising interdisciplinary legal clinic teams for community services since 2015 and served as advisors to human right committees of governmental and non-governmental organizations. Prof. Shee has been voted and revoted as a Trustee the Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) since 2018 and served as Chair of various ALSA Committees. Based on her commitments to community work, Prof. Shee was voted as the President of the Taiwan Elderly Rights Association in June 2024.

Bio of Joy Wei-Tung Chiang

With expertise in interdisciplinary research, social prescribing, museum studies, and aging studies, Joy Chiang works at the intersection of social prescribing, cultural engagement, and long-term care for older adults. She is a research assistant at CIRAS at National Chung Cheng University and a research fellow at the National Policy Foundation and the Silver Light Alliance, where she contributes to the Housing Certification Project on age-friendly architecture. Joy has evaluated cultural initiatives for social well-being, including impact analyses of music on prescription for the National Symphony Orchestra and museum-based health interventions in Taiwan, the UK, and Singapore. She is also an international member of the National Academy for Social Prescribing.

Bio of Chin-Huang Chen

He graduated from the College of Medicine at National Taiwan University in 1977 and completed pediatric specialty training at National Taiwan University Hospital. He later returned to Xingang to establish a pediatric clinic. In 1987, he founded the Hsin Kang Foundation of Culture and Education to promote arts, environmental initiatives, and community development, serving as Chairman until 2000 and again from 2012 to 2018. From 2000 to 2002, he served as a Minister without Portfolio. In 2005, he established the Fuyuan Service Association to support individuals with disabilities. In 2019, he founded Xingang Su Yuan and introduced a localized model of social prescribing, integrating community and cultural resources to promote a “Healthy Community in a Healthy Society.”