Social Isolation and Loneliness

Social connections impact our health in profound ways, whether it is the support we receive from family and friends in navigating serious illness, the joy from shared social activities, or connecting with our community. Experiencing social isolation, the objective lack of contact with friends, family, or the community, or loneliness, the subjective feeling of lacking companionship or feeling left out, may be signs that our overall social life is struggling. But, should we as clinicians care about the social lives of our patients? Are there meaningful ways of assessing loneliness and social isolation in clinical settings and connecting patients with interventions? How can public health and policy experts address these needs, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic which turned our social lives upside down?

On today today’s podcast, we are joined by guest host and UCSF geriatrician Ashwin Kotwal as we welcome three renowned scholars in the field: 1) Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Brigham Young University, an international expert on loneliness, social isolation, and social interventions, who has served on the National Academy of Sciences committee on social isolation and loneliness and advised the UK Loneliness Campaign, 2) Dr. Thomas Cudjoe, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, who has conducted groundbreaking work on the measurement of social isolation and mechanisms of impact on health, and 3) Dr. Carla Perissinotto, Professor of Medicine at UCSF, who has pioneered the clinical and policy approach to addressing loneliness and social isolation.  

We talk about:  

• Their personal and clinical inspiration for studying loneliness and social isolation, and hurdles encountered in bringing these needs to the clinical world. 

• The Listening "EAR" approach that simplifies assessment of loneliness and social isolation in clinical settings, and other practical pointers. 

Check out some of their recent work, including:

• Dr. Holt-Lunstad’s and Dr. Perissinotto’s powerful perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine which provides a clinical framework for addressing loneliness and social isolation. 

• Dr. Cudjoe’s recent work demonstrating the impact of social isolation on dementia risk, populations at risk, and how our social lives "getting under our skin."

• Dr. Kotwal's work showing how social isolation impacts end-of-life health care use, including hospice and acute care.

We touch briefly on (and build on) topics discussed in prior podcasts such as loneliness during the pandemic. Tune in to hear Alex’s acoustic rendition of Outkast’s Hey Y’All!  

-Ashwin Kotwal