This post was written by Risa Wilkerson, Executive Director of Healthy Places by Design and Edward Garcia, Executive Director of the Foundation for Social Connection.

  • The problem: Social isolation and loneliness — long a major public health concern — are on the rise.
  • Why it matters: Across all ages, social isolation and loneliness cause people to live sicker, unhappier, and shorter lives.
  • The solution: To maximise impact, efforts to reverse social isolation and loneliness while building social connectedness should be coordinated so that successes and lessons learned drive further innovation and progress.

In August 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, two-thirds of US adults surveyed by the AARP Foundation reported experiencing social isolation. Now that the lockdowns are over, we might expect to see social isolation and loneliness decrease as people resume their ‘normal’ lives. But that’s not necessarily the case.

In the UK, for example, more people are lonely today than before Covid-19 struck — 3.3 million versus 2.6 million in 2020 — despite the end of social restrictions. And in Australia, researchers identified a persistent “loneliness gap” post-lockdown. Although many people who were less lonely going into the pandemic returned to socialising, those who were loneliest before the pandemic became even lonelier.

Social isolation and loneliness are closely related but they are different. While social isolation is an objective measure of lack of social contact, loneliness is the subjective feeling of being lonely.

Both are bad for health. Research has linked social isolation and loneliness to heightened risks for a range of physical and mental health conditions. Yet having strong social connections and networks can increase a person’s longevity by as much as 50%.

Across the lifespan and across all aspects of life — housing, transportation, health care, employment, education, and leisure — we need to build social connectedness and make it easier for people to interact in meaningful ways post-Covid and beyond.

To end the pressing global issue of social isolation, we must commit to connecting with and learning from each other.

Taking action

Fortunately, there’s a lot of great work going on in this space. Whether it’s building “care blocks” in Bogotá to support unpaid caregivers, training volunteers in Australia to check in with socially isolated older adults, or launching a campaign to end loneliness in the UK, governments and communities are investing in ways to build social connectedness.

But many of these efforts are playing out, ironically, in isolation. They are not connected or coordinated, which means that lessons learned are not shared among communities and opportunities for improvement are missed. In addition, leaders of national initiatives are often unaware of successful community programmes that could inform and enrich their own efforts — let alone what’s being tried out in other nations. To end the pressing global issue of social isolation, we must commit to connecting with and learning from each other.

Learning from one another

The Global Initiative on Loneliness and Connection (GILC), launched in early 2021, is one step in this direction. It comprises national organisations from 13 countries — and growing — that are building social connection. When French leaders expressed concern about increased social isolation and loneliness in their country, GILC filled them in on national campaigns to end loneliness in the UK and Australia, as well as the establishments of ministries for loneliness in Japan and the UK. Now France is taking those lessons and creating its own ministry of loneliness and developing its own national campaign for building social connectedness.

Imagine what would happen with more connection and coordination — community to community, community to national, national to global, and back again. We’d see more progress, faster, with the spread and adoption of successful innovations and best practices.

In the United States, programmes and initiatives to build social connection are popping up everywhere. Healthy Places by Design, the Coalition to End Social Isolation & Loneliness, and the Foundation for Social Connection are working to tie all these threads together, bringing the local voice to national policy discussions, providing national scientific expertise and best practices to local communities, and coordinating campaigns across all levels.

We’re taking a number of approaches to make this happen. For example, we’ve established a social isolation learning network of local leaders from diverse places and organisations who freely discuss and share their work in building social connectedness. We also host an annual event, the End Social Isolation and Loneliness Action Forum, that brings together thousands of participants from all over the world who are committed to building social connectedness. Through these and other activities, we aim to support local leaders in deploying strategies and best practices for building social connectedness in their communities — and involve them in shaping national initiatives.

No matter where you are or what level of government you work in, you can join this movement. The work we’re doing in the US can be replicated in other countries — and much more needs to be done beyond that. For example, you can:

· Work with partners in your community to determine where social isolation exists and how best to address it.

· Join a learning network or build one of your own.

· Help give voice to local leaders who are working to advance social connectedness.

· Register for our free, online Action Forum in October.

Ultimately, we hope to build a global network of local leaders committed to building social connectedness. We invite you to explore this work with us. Feel free to reach out at risaw@healthyplacesbydesign.org and edward@social-connection.org.

👋 You can create a post like this one! Share your thoughts with a community of public servants. Learn more

(Image Credit: Unsplash)