In this special episode of Frontiers in Health & Happiness, Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath explores how social well-being, relationships, community, trust, inclusion, and social determinants of health shape our happiness and overall well-being. He discusses loneliness, social media, social capital, and collective well-being—and explains why healthier, happier communities require opportunities for everyone to belong, participate, and flourish.
In this special bonus episode of Frontiers in Health & Happiness, host Ayla Fudala speaks with Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath, Director of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, about the importance of social well-being and collective well-being.
When we think about health and happiness, we often focus on individual choices, emotions, and achievements. But Dr. Viswanath’s work asks us to widen the lens: Our well-being is also shaped by our relationships, communities, institutions, social environments, and the opportunities we have to feel safe, included, respected, supported, and connected.
The conversation explores ideas from Dr. Viswanath’s book chapter, “Beyond Individual Happiness: Understanding the Role of Social in Health and Well-Being,” co-authored with Dr. Zichao Li. Together, they discuss why social connection and participation matter for health, how trust and social capital operate in everyday life, and why collective well-being is about more than simply adding up individual happiness.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Learn more about Dr. Vishwanath’s work and read “Beyond Individual Happiness: Understanding the Role of Social in Health and Well-Being” in Perspectives on Wellbeing for Inclusive Schools and an Inclusive Society: https://www.emerald.com/books/edited-volume/21584/Wellbeing-for-Inclusive-Schools-and-an-Inclusive
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Frontiers in Health & Happiness is the official podcast of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, exploring the science of health, happiness, social connection, and well-being.
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, Senior Communications Coordinator, and I'll be asking experts how to live a healthy, happy life.
Our Virtues for Well-being series has come to an end. But before we move into our next theme, we're excited to share a special bonus episode featuring our Center Director, Dr. K. “Vish” Vishwanath. Dr. Vishwanath is the Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communications at Harvard Chan School, where his work focuses on health communication, health equity, social determinants of health, and the broader conditions that shape people's ability to live healthy lives.
This conversation was inspired by a new book chapter by Dr. Vishwanath, recently published with co-author Dr. Zichao Li, titled “Beyond Individual Happiness: Understanding the Role of Social in Health and Well-Being.” We wanted to share the ideas behind the chapter more broadly, because social well-being will be a major focus of our center's work moving forward.
When we talk about well-being, we often focus on individual choices how we eat, sleep, exercise, manage stress, or find purpose. But Dr. Vishwanath’s chapter asks us to widen the lens. Our happiness and health are also shaped by our relationships, communities, institutions and whether people feel safe, included, respected, supported and connected.
Thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Vishwanath. My first question is, when you use the phrase “social well-being,” what do you mean by it?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: So social well-being is being used in contrast to physical and psychological well-being. What I mean by social well-being is that we are focusing on factors outside the individual, and how that individual is related to social institutions, community around them, and people and groups such as neighborhoods, family, and friends. So how those relationships and how people's sense of trust with those relationships influence their well-being, is what I consider as social well-being.
Ayla Fudala: In your book chapter, you argue that well-being is not just an individual experience, but is shaped by social, environmental, and structural factors. What do we miss when we talk about happiness only as a personal feeling or personal achievement?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: It's a very good question. So there is a descriptive aspect to it as well as a normative aspect to that. What I mean by that is if you are focusing only on the individuals and their happiness, it somehow puts the onus on that individual to do whatever they can to be happy, to have those positive emotions, to have that sense of purpose. But in reality, life is not like that. Social conditions, social circumstances, social structure; what I mean is one's position in the society, their class, their sense of belonging to a community, how they are treated, how they are being excluded or included in social institutions in the community; all these things influence how one feels psychologically and even physically. So to exclude these social dimensions, to focus exclusively on those individual feelings and emotions can do injustice to that individual, put an unreasonable burden on that individual to be happy, and we are ignoring anything else that influences their well-being.
Ayla Fudala: You write about the move from an illness model to wellness to a more whole person view of wellbeing. How does social wellbeing change the way we think about what it means to be healthy?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: Think about it this way. I want to tell you a story, a very small story. Suppose there is a community festival with public art. There is music, there is dance, there is theatre. There is a small fair, a market. You go and buy vegetables, maybe a homemade pie. You are with friends. You are enjoying, having a good time. To me, the feeling of positive affect, as they call it, is stemming from that participation in that community event.
So when I say social well-being, it is that participation in the community which engenders that sense of belonging, that you are a part of something bigger, larger, and whatever that is happening out there and your inclusion in it is allowing you to feel differently, to feel good, to feel positively. To me, that is what we mean by this larger sense of focusing on social well-being and social connections, and how that could be helpful for individual well-being.
So over a period of time, right, we have become much more sophisticated in the way we think about health. So, as I said before, in my chapter and other places, focusing exclusively on physical conditions and biomarkers such as cholesterol and blood pressure, that is a negative aspect of health, has changed to more positive aspects.
Being physically active, eating healthy, sleeping well-- that is wellness to now. Well-being is including all three dimensions: not only physical health, but psychological health and social health. That is how you relate to other people and how you feel about that relationship and how you trust other people. That evolution means it's just not focusing on physical health, but as a whole person, your wellbeing as a whole, and how you relate to the society.
This is nothing new. The World Health Organization has defined health as not merely an absence of disease or infirmity, but a complete state of well-being-- physical, psychological, and social. Many people understand physical well-being and mental well-being, but social well-being may feel less familiar.
Ayla Fudala: Why do you think social well-being deserves to stand alongside physical and mental well-being as a core pillar of health?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: There is increasing social isolation and loneliness all over the world. We feel because of social media and the news cycle, penetration of different kinds of media, that we should not feel lonely because we are surrounded by so-called friends on social media. But why is it that people are feeling more lonely than in the past, increasingly feeling socially isolated? The question comes up ,how are we connected to other people, to other institutions in the society? How are we participating in the community life? These external factors also are influencing how people feel physically and psychologically. So people come to this in a very intuitive way.
When we talk about physical health, how do you feel in terms of your own physical health, cardiovascular health, physical biomarkers? Same thing about psychological. We talk about your feelings, but we seldom talk about how you connect with other people, how you trust other people. How do you find a sense of social support from other people or from the community? Do you feel that you belong to the community? Do you feel included in the community? These dimensions are extremely important, but somehow do not come to us intuitively. So we are striving to advocate and articulate the importance of this individual's connection to the larger society, and why it is as critical, as important as individual focus on their own physical health or psychological health. And that's the reason we are trying to advocate for social well-being.
Ayla Fudala: In your book chapter, you discuss social integration and social inclusion. How would you explain the difference between being socially integrated and being truly included?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: Integration and inclusion are related but not the same. So integration for example, could include how you shop in the local community, how you relate to your neighbors. Do you know your neighbors? Do you have family in the community? Friends in the community? Do you participate in the community life by going to a community fair? By going to the community library, being a part of the community institutions? And when you do those things, you feel a sense of social cohesion and solidarity with the community. Now, building on that, we also talk about inclusion. Inclusion goes beyond connection to complete participation where you feel you are wanted, where you feel your participation is desired and encouraged, as opposed to being discriminated against, as opposed to being discouraged for a variety of reasons, whether because of your background, socioeconomic status, or because you are of a different race or ethnicity, or for any other reason. Inclusion means being a complete total part of the society where you are welcomed as an individual. That's the reason. Inclusion goes beyond integration.
Ayla Fudala: Social inclusion raises questions of equity, respect and full participation. How do you exclusion, discrimination, poverty, or lack of access shape a person's ability to experience well-being?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: So if you think about it, we have a very large body of work under the rubric of so-called social determinants of health, or as I would like to call the social drivers of health. Because they are not always deterministic. Social drivers are mutable. So these social drivers, whether it is factors such as social class, whether it is race or ethnicity, whether it is societal participation, whether you are able to vote, your sense of being included or excluded. Discrimination because of who you are or where you are or where your social position is. All these factors influence psychological health and physical health. There is a very solid body of work.
What is less understood is that these similar same factors also influence social health. For example, if you are discriminated and excluded, you cannot participate completely in community life. You cannot access community resources, you cannot access community support. Lack of access to community support, to community resources, could impinge upon whether you are able to access services to improve your own health and how you feel about it when you are excluded. So social well-being is not separate from physical or psychological well-being in that sense. All these three things go together in order to help someone flourish and thrive.
Ayla Fudala: In your chapter, you discuss social capital, trust, reciprocity, civic participation, and community ties. What does social capital look like in everyday life and how does it support wellbeing?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: So let me give you a story on that, on social capital. It's a practical way of illustrating what we mean by social capital and trust and reciprocity. Suppose there are four of us you, me, and two other people, and we want to buy something, but we can't afford to buy that individually. So what do we do? Each of us contributes $5 a month. So at the end of the month, at the end of the day, we have $20. One of us gets those $20 and is able to go out and buy that particular item. The next month we will repeat the process. Each of us contributes $5, and the second person will get those $20 to go out and buy those things.
Now, for this to happen, where all four of us will take turns in amassing collectively the amount we need to satisfy a particular requirement requires enormous amount of trust, right? Because if I don't trust you, then I will start thinking about, if I lend you the money now, will I get the money when it's my turn? But I am doing this great deal of confidence, which is what we call a trust, that I will get my turn and I'm willing to wait for my turn. To me, that is trust. And that relationship among the four of us is reciprocity, where we are working with each other in a very reciprocal way for a larger good, that good that can satisfy all of us. That's a very simple illustration of this larger concept of reciprocity and trust.
The reason I am using this illustration is because social capital can be very misleading. Because the term the phrase social capital might imply something in our wallet that can be taken out and lent to someone, but it is definitely not an individual attribute. Social capital is an emergent property. What I mean by that is it is something that stems between from the interaction between two people. Two entities are more than two people, right? That's very different from physical capital. That's why social capital is all about trust is about that. Reciprocity is about the relationship between two people or more than two people.
Ayla Fudala: And how is social capital important to our well-being?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: So there is a large body of work, again, that has shown that social capital can engender social support and provide access to resources in the community. So there are varieties of social capital. There are three types of social capital that researchers have talked about. You know, bonding, bridging and linking. Each of these dimensions are types of social capital have been linked to different types of services that a person can access.
For example, a bonding capital. Social capital is something that an individual may feel with a friend, with family, with someone close, individually or interpersonally developing that sense of trust and seek help or support, or at least perceive that they are supported. Linking and bridging capital can connect you to social institutions in the community, where you are able to access resources as and when you need them, and when and when these resources are available to you as you need them. So access to health services, access to, say, communities, third spaces such as parks, malls, sidewalks which all influence a physical health and or physical activity allow you to go out and engage. Breathe the fresh air and engage in physical activity and feel physically good. Social capital or dimensions of social capital can influence those individual feelings of health.
Ayla Fudala: Loneliness and social isolation have become major public health concerns. What is the difference between being alone and being lonely, and why do these experiences matter for health?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: This is really an important distinction to be made here. Being alone is a state, is a condition. Being lonely is a feeling where you want to be with other people, but you are unable to be with other people. Being alone can be a choice or can be physically isolating, right? You know you cannot physically move because of transportation, because of age, because of other conditions. But being lonely is a psychological state where you are trying to connect with other people, where you are striving for social connections, but somehow you are unable to do that. And the reasons behind it are important to address, because feeling lonely means having a lack of feeling, belonging, not accessing social support when you need it. Not able to connect to the society or social institutions, to your neighbors or family and friends, which can have significant effect on one's psychological health, and of course, also physical health. That's why we draw the distinction between isolation, loneliness, and being alone. Alone is a physical thing, but social isolation and loneliness are more psychological feelings.
Ayla Fudala: In your book chapter, you also discuss social support. What kinds of support do people need most? Emotional, informational, practical, belonging? And how can families, schools, workplaces, or communities become better sources of that support?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: It's not that one source of support or one type of support is better than others. We all need different types of social support under different conditions. You may need emotional support when you are going through some difficult times. Let's take somebody who is undergoing treatment for a serious form of cancer. Now you are physically affected when you are going through the treatment, which is very taxing. You may need different types of support during that process. For example, you may need emotional support from someone to tell you when you are feeling down. To say that they are there for you, they are going to take care of you and they are with you. You may need informational support because you are wondering when the treatment ends. Will the cancer end? Is the cancer cured? Is the cancer managed? Is it likely to come back a few years down the road? You may need instrumental support because you may need somebody to give you a ride for the treatment to the clinic, to shop for groceries, to meet friends. So it's not that one type of support is superior to the other. All of us need social support of different kinds at different stages and under different conditions in our life.
Ayla Fudala: A lot of public conversation focuses on the harms of social media. Your chapter offers a more nuanced picture. When can digital communication undermine well-being and when can it actually help people connect, belong, and participate?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: So this is a question that is on the mind of many people, policymakers, different stakeholders, and of course, researchers. There is no simple good answer to this, and let me explain why. Social media have fostered connections beyond one's immediate confines, across geographies. So I am now connected to family members and friends in other parts of the world, outside my community, outside my office or institution. So that is an advantage in terms of social media making those connections for you. Also, social media has compressed time in a very different way. What I mean is, I am not only able to connect with people who are outside my physical proximity, but also in terms of temporality. I have been connecting with my cousins, with my friends, from my high school, from my college. To that extent, it is extraordinarily advantageous to be on social media because it has rebuilt connections that have been lost or that connections that have been somewhat tenuous, that are frayed because of time and distance. To that extent, social media have been extraordinarily helpful.
At the same time, we often mistake those offline connections, are same as us online connections we may have. We may enjoy because they cannot replace my connections to the community. It cannot replace my participation in the life of the community. It should not substitute. My going out and shopping in the community. My going out and getting a book out of the library. Going to a community festival. Say hello to my neighbors and help them when I when they need help, right? To that extent, our social media helping or hindering those ties within our community life. The jury's out on this. And to the extent that social media could affect adversely that participation in community life. Social media have a negative impact. So we really need to take a more nuanced look at the role of social media in one's participation in social life. The evidence has been argued in more black and white terms than looking at this in a more nuanced way.
Ayla Fudala: How would you define collective well-being?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: So collective well-being is both a descriptive and a normative term. What do I mean by that? Descriptively, I am defining collective well-being as well-being of a collective, which could be a community, a group, an institution, a country, or a society as a whole. So collective well-being is this notion of well-being of all, everybody. And to that extent it is a descriptive term. It's also normative in the sense I am arguing that it is very desirable. It is what, as a society, we should strive for where we are focusing on thriving and flourishing of not one but all. That's what I mean by collective wellbeing.
Ayla Fudala: How is collective wellbeing distinct from social wellbeing? Where do the two diverge and overlap?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: Social well-being, as I said, may still focus on the individual, but their social interactions, social connections and how they link with, participate in and connect with community groups and institutions, neighbors and families and friends. But we are still focusing on the individual. When we talk about collective wellbeing, we are talking about wellbeing of a society as a whole, or the community as a whole, or the abstract term collective as a whole. So they are related. But collective wellbeing takes the definition from the individual to a level higher than the individual, to a group around that individual, to a collective around that individual. To that extent, they are very different.
Ayla Fudala: You argue that collective wellbeing is not simply the sum of individual happiness. Why is that distinction so important? Especially when we think about inequality, safety, belonging, and justice.
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: Think about the reasons why we are discussing collective well-being. Today you mentioned inequalities. There is an increasing sense-- and there are data that bear this out--there is growing inequality among people, even among societies. There is migration globally. Some of it is voluntary migration. Some of it is involuntary migration. One is forced to migrate because of one's circumstances. Wars, floods, pestilence, famines. One is forced to leave where one was born and brought up for a better life. Wars and conflicts are ravaging different parts of the world. The speed with which technologies are being introduced while they are serving some positive functions are also fraying community ties, disrupting the way we live, the way we shop, the way we interact with institutions.
So there are a number of these social forces that are outside the individual, that are outside the control of the individual, that are buffeting people. So how should we feel about it? How should we think about it? So it is not just about how I feel as an individual at that given point in time, but it is about what are the social forces outside me regulating my feelings, controlling my feelings, affecting and influencing how I feel about it. That is that is a distinction that is very critical to understand.
It is that reason that we are arguing for this collective well-being, because it is insufficient and inadequate to think that somehow if I am physically doing well and psychologically doing well, and if I have my connections, I am healthy, I am flourishing. How can one flourish and thrive when everyone around you is miserable. It's a very straightforward question to me. You cannot flourish. Thrive. Feel good if people around you are also not flourishing. Thriving. Feeling good if they are being excluded for this reason. It is very critical to think of as a society. Where are we going and how are we failing? And how every person in the society feels that sense of belonging, with that sense of participation as equal opportunity to flourish and thrive, that is collective well-being to me.
Ayla Fudala: That's interesting. So if you hurt the part, you hurt the whole. If you discriminate against someone, you're really hurting yourself in the long run.
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: That's the normative component that you may feel good by putting down someone else at a given time. Are you excluding someone for a variety of reasons of their background, their social status, or their physical looks. But at the end of the day, you have to ask the question by putting down other people. Do you feel good? Is that what we are striving for as a society? How can one flourish and thrive if others don't, but you do?
Ayla Fudala: We recently concluded our virtues for wellbeing series. When you think about social and collective well-being, what virtues feel the most essential to you?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: So we have been shifting our focus from the individual to the group, individual to the society. What we do not mean that individuals don't matter, but what we are saying is we should also focus attention to the condition, circumstances around that individual. So virtues are talked about in those individual terms. But what we have been pushing as a part of this collective and social well-being is those civic virtues that are important to promote that participation in community life and promote that collective flourishing and well-being, such as interpersonal trust and institutional trust. Trust in other people. Trust in institutions around you. Social cohesion. Feeling that sense of belonging and peace with neighbors and friends and families. The sense of justice, fairness, equality, solidarity that you feel with others around you. To me, those are examples of civic virtues which are as important. And so we are moving from focusing exclusively on these virtues, lying at the individual level to now these community civic virtues as an evolution in the way we are discussing collectively well-being and flourishing and thriving.
Ayla Fudala: Okay, this is my final question. For listeners who want to improve their own social well-being and contribute to the well-being of people around them. What are a few practical steps they can take personally in their communities or through civic life?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: I want to preface my answer by saying that not everybody should be forced to be a part of the society, are somehow feel this enormous pressure to go out and do things right. So I think that feeling that you should be an extrovert and therefore if you are not an extrovert, that you are somehow suffering from lesser well-being, etc.
What people can do is really try to foster the sense of these connections, particularly this sense of connections with friends or family. It also is critical to think consciously, intentionally, deliberately about the well-being of others. You may or may not feel like it on any given day, but trying to be more deliberate and intentional about it is very important. Cultivating this sense of thinking of other people, right? It's a mindset change. Think of other people before you just think about yourself. And there are also other things you can do. You can volunteer in the community. You can go out and help others, help a neighbor, help a friend, help a family member. You can also think in terms of going to the local institution and supporting that local institution. All these match things that are within your hands. You don't have to scale Everest to feel that sense of achievement or belonging. You can do small things in your day-to-day life that can cultivate deliberately, intentionally that sense of collective well-being and social well-being.
Ayla Fudala: Do you have any final words for our audience?
Dr. K. “Vish” Viswanath: The only advice I can give is to be actively thinking about someone other than ourselves, thinking about others, and thinking about society. I know that comes across as very preachy, but given the current conditions or circumstances, the way we are driven in the world with all kinds of conflict ideological, class, tribal, ethnic, racial, given these divides, it's more important than ever to think about societies flourishing collectively than individually.
Ayla Fudala: Thank you so much to Dr. Vish Vishwanath for joining us today and helping us think more deeply about social well-being, collective well-being, and the conditions that allow people and communities to flourish. If you're interested in learning more, we recommend you read Dr. Vishwanath’s book chapter. As a reminder, it's titled “Beyond Individual Happiness: Understanding the Role of Social in Health and Well-Being,” and it's published in the book “Perspectives on Wellbeing for Inclusive Schools and an Inclusive Society.”
As social well-being becomes a growing focus of our Center's work, we look forward to continuing these conversations about connection, inclusion, equity, and the role of communities in shaping health and happiness.
This has been another episode of Frontiers in Health and Happiness, the official podcast of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. To learn about upcoming events, visit our website, sign up for our mailing list and follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Podcast 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.