In this episode of Frontiers in Health & Happiness, join me as I delve into the critical issue of loneliness with an expert in the field: Dr. Louise Hawkley, a Principal Research Scientist at the National Opinion Research Center. Dr. Hawkley discusses the profound impacts of loneliness on mental, physical, and social health, particularly among older adults; and offers actionable strategies to foster meaningful social connections in our communities.
Loneliness and the Need for Belonging and Trust: An Interview with Dr. Louise Hawkley
Ayla Fudala: Hello and welcome to Frontiers in Health & Happiness, the official podcast of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. My name is Ayla Fudala, Center Communications Coordinator, and I'll be asking experts how to live a healthy and happy life.
Today we'll be continuing our loneliness and wellbeing theme and discussing how loneliness can impact our health as we get older. As we mentioned in our first episode, loneliness is associated with many negative mental and physical health impacts. That's why it's so important that our society investigates the causes and effects of the growing loneliness epidemic, and comes up with innovative ways to address it.
Our guest today is Dr. Louise Hawkley, a Principal Research Scientist at the National Opinion Research Centre and a specialist on loneliness and health during aging. Dr. Hawkley currently serves as co-investigator on the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project, a study of health and social factors among older adults in the United States.
Ayla Fudala: I began our conversation by asking Dr. Hawkley, why is loneliness so important?
Dr. Louise Hawkley: Loneliness is important for a lot of reasons. I think anybody who's feeling lonely at any given time would be able to tell you how miserable it feels. How it leads to less than desirable kinds of behaviors. Because when you don't feel you have anyone around you, you start filling in with perhaps behaviors that aren't so healthy. Maybe you're overeating, drinking too much. Maybe you're not getting the sleep you need. Maybe you're spending too much time in front of the television screen or the computer screen, things that aren't actually profitable for your social health.
But then the bigger issue is also that loneliness leads to poorer physical health outcomes. So especially if you're chronically lonely, you typically are going to be at a higher risk for mortality. You're going to die sooner. But also just health in physiological signs and symptoms, like things like your cortisol system, it gets out of control and your blood pressure maybe gets out of control. We see that people who are lonely tend to be more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and stroke. And now data is starting to show they're more vulnerable to diabetes as well. So there are these long term effects, especially for people's loneliness that's measured when they're getting older.
Ayla Fudala: Is social connection the solution to loneliness?
Dr. Louise Hawkley: Social connection is a big word. And yes, I would say if loneliness is a symptom of anything, it's a symptom of social disconnection. There are lots of ways of connecting. But yes, that's what you would want to do is find a way to connect. And that could be on an individual level, finding it could be an intimate partner, it could be close friends. It could be finding a group that shares an activity with you, or shows a belief system with you that you get together with regularly. So those kinds of connections are all helpful.
We as humans were wired to be connected to others that we need each other for in historically or from an evolutionary perspective. We needed each other to even survive. But we need each other continually, even to this day, to thrive, to be able to achieve all that humans are capable of achieving, which is always better and more if done in cooperation with others. So we have this innate motivation to connect with others. And that's a good thing, because it's exactly what we need to satisfy our humanness.
Ayla Fudala: How can we help older adults experiencing loneliness?
Dr. Louise Hawkley: It could be as simple as in the case of, let's say, older adults who are housebound, they can't get out to do social things in a social context. They need transportation. How many of our cities lack the kinds of conversation that will go door to door, not curb to curb, because this older adult won't be able to get down the stairs and down the curb. How many of them are going to be able to get them from the door of their home to the door of the community center, where they can have lunch with friends? Those kinds of things are really important.
Ayla Fudala: Can you give an example of an intervention to help older adults?
Dr. Louise Hawkley: If somebody comes to the door-- this is less and less often now-- but if somebody comes to the door, drops off the food and leaves, it has not as much of an impact as coming to the door, coming in with the food, or at least chatting with the person before having the food delivered, and maybe doing it more than once a week. The dose response. So those older adults who are isolated and rely on somebody to bring their food benefit from seeing that food delivered more often because they get a social interaction with who's delivering it. So that's another way that this can be addressed.
Ayla Fudala: How can we promote social connection in our day to day lives?
Dr. Louise Hawkley: I think the best way is probably just to model social connection, to model attempts to connect in a real way. It's so rare to have people who don't know each other just pass some pleasantries. And I think doing that in all contexts work, community, family breeds more of the same. You're inviting other people to engage with you, makes them feel good, and makes them want to engage in turn.
Ayla Fudala: What can public health students and professionals do to help promote social connection?
Dr. Louise Hawkley: I think the job of public health professionals is to understand what is happening at a larger scale, I guess you could say. What is it about our communities, about our states, about our country that can be modified in a way that helps people connect with each other? A small-scale example might be a city that decides we're going to create walking paths that have benches, places where people can actually stop and have a conversation, not promote the as fast as you can get there, and don't talk to anybody on your way there. But rather, here's a place where you can actually take a break and somebody might actually talk to you, or you might want to talk to somebody. Make it appealing, make it greenspace, make it a park, whatever little nudges like that that can be introduced into the environment can go a long way to encouraging the social activity, the social interactions that would normally not happen.
Ayla Fudala: Loneliness has been proven to be a serious public health issue. So what is our government doing to address it?
Dr. Louise Hawkley: The Surgeon General has certainly taken the government's perspective in releasing that report that basically says this is an advisory, we have a problem, we have to do something about it. And I think he's laid out what some of those changes could be, and part of it would be just supporting, whether financially or in principle, supporting local efforts. Communities are trying to do work in this area. They're trying to help people find ways to connect with others. What they need is money, and they need recognition that what they are doing is important. And the more that that is recognized, the more the community members will actually realize this is a resource that is there for them.
Ayla Fudala: Dr. Hawkley, what are your plans for future research into loneliness and social connection?
Dr. Luise Hawkley: I think the most interesting for me right now-- there's two things, but the first is getting a better understanding of how the social world is changing with successive cohorts. We've been running this National Social life, health and aging project since 2005. We brought in the so-called silent generation, those born between 1920 and 1947. Then we brought in the baby boomer cohort in 1948 to 65. We now want to bring in Gen X, born from 66 to 80, roughly. So each of those generations, and that's using it in a very broad term, there's a lot of it's a lot of years in each of those cohorts.
But with each successive cohort, the social environment in which they've developed and which they are living has changed a lot, as well as everything else about the world, the political environment, the health, environment, the medical advances that have been made. But in any event, looking over time to better understand what are the universals? What is it that protects people's sense of social connectedness if it has changed with this younger, younger and younger or newer and newer cohorts, in what way or are they, by the time they reach old age, are they going to look just like the baby boomers did when they were that age, or like the silent Generation when they did at that age? There's reason to think they probably won't. But that's an empirical question. We have to understand the life course trajectory of how people connect in a world that is changing all the time.
Ayla Fudala: It's reassuring to know that experts like Dr. Hawkley are researching both the problem and potential solutions, testing out interventions to help those who are most impacted. Whether you're a policymaker, a public health professional, or just an everyday citizen like me, I encourage you to think of ways you can provide social support for the people around you and help to build a more connected society.
In the next instalment of our Loneliness and Well-being series. I'll interview Dr. Koichiro Shiba, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Boston University and an expert on the intersection of loneliness and health equity.
New episodes in our Loneliness and Wellbeing series will air every two weeks. Episodes can be found on the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness website and YouTube channel, as well as on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever else podcasts are found. Thank you for listening.