The Age Friendly York 'Your Time' Baseline Assessment: Leisure Time (3rd June 2021) Age Friendly York are looking at how older people can make productive and rewarding use of their time, by carrying out a range of Your Time checks against the World Health Organisation age friendly standards Baseline Assessment - Your Time
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Loneliness and Social Isolation - Resources
Loneliness has been described as ‘the feeling we get when our need for rewarding social contact and loneliness relationships is not met’. It can happen at any stage in life, and in response to a national survey in 2020, 25.7% of York residents reported that they feel lonely often/always or some of the time. We also know that only 2 in 5 social care users in York had as much social contact as they would like, and this number is similar for adult carers too, whether under or over 65. This is a larger problem in York than elsewhere, with our figures the third worst in the region. This is a problem which cannot be solved by medicine, and requires a community response, as the health effects of loneliness have been shown to significantly increase the risk of disease and premature death.
The York Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2022-2032 has therefore set a target to reduce the proportion of adults who report feeling lonely from 25% to 20% of our adult population. Live Well York has started to capture some of the local solutions through the Social Contact page as well as promoting hundreds of activities and social opportunities through the What’s On Directory.
To support the work in York it is useful to understand the impact of social isolation as well as the understanding of effective solutions through research. Below is a library of papers on a local; regional; national and international level:
Sheffield Hallam Centre for Loneliness Studies - The Centre for Loneliness Studies carries out internationally recognised, high quality academic research on loneliness which is theoretically driven and both informed by, and able to inform, policy and practice. Read about the research projects carried out by the centre.
Connecting People and Places: Bringing Communities together in East Sussex (July 2023) This year’s Annual Report of the Director of Public Health focuses on social connections and multi-agency work to tackle loneliness. It is the final in a series of three annual reports looking at the broad social and economic circumstances that together influence health, known as the social determinants of health, in East Sussex. East Sussex: Connecting People and Places.
Through the portal we go; mapping for the new world - The Onion Collective (June 2023) - The Onion Collective is made up of place-based entrepreneurs and economists from the South-West, and Free Ice Cream, a design studio. They've created a community mapping tool, the Understory. Through the portal we go: mapping for the new world - Medium.com
Mayor of London: Connective Social Infrastructure - How London's social spaces and networks help us live well together (August 2020): London’s social infrastructure is one of its great assets. From bumping into friends and neighbours in the park café, to visiting a local nail salon, recycling unwanted furniture on a Facebook group, using the library to find information, or getting help from a community support network, social infrastructure plays an important role in supporting and enriching the lives of Londoners. Connective Social Infrastructure - london.gov.uk
NIHR Applied Research Collaboration West (2020) Across the world, government-mandated lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a rise in community action in neighbourhoods. This rapid study covered the ‘Bristol Built-Up Area’ as defined by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Apart but not Alone: neighbour support in the Bristol area during the COVID-19 lockdown - ARC West (nihr.ac.uk)
Social connection and mortality in UK Biobank 10th November 2023 - Components of social connection are associated with mortality, but research examining their independent and combined effects in the same dataset is lacking. This study aimed to examine the independent and combined associations between functional and structural components of social connection and mortality. Social connection and mortality in UK Biobank: a prospective cohort analysis | BMC Medicine | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)
The Tackling Loneliness Hub - The Tackling Loneliness Hub is an online learning and exchange space for people working on loneliness across research, policy and practice.
Membership of the Tackling Loneliness Hub is open to all professionals in England who are working on loneliness. Tackling Loneliness Hub
Government's work on tackling loneliness - Tackling loneliness matters to everyone: individuals, employers, communities, educators and health professionals. Supporting people to have meaningful social relationships is not just crucial to people’s physical and mental health. It also affects their engagement in the workplace and wider community cohesion. We all need to take action to tackle loneliness across society, and government can play an important role supporting this. This page brings together government's work and announcements on loneliness.
The Economist newsletter (September 23rd 2023) - The newsletter brings together various articles including two about loneliness, with reference to related research. The Economist is behind a paywall but you can read a limited number of articles by subscribing to the newsletter. The Economist - Special Edition on Strangers.
The Conversation (20th December 2021) - People feel lonelier in crowded cities - but green space can help Andrea Mechelli - Professor of Early Intervention in Mental Health, King's College London. All of us can probably remember a time when we felt lonely. In the UK, around 45% of people report experiencing loneliness – with 5% of people experiencing severe loneliness. People feel lonelier in crowded cities – but green spaces can help (theconversation.com)
A local community course that raises wellbeing and pro-sociality: Evidence from a randomised controlled trial (August 2021) - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization "Our study shows that wellbeing is not fixed but can be changed by means of intervention, cost-effectively and at scale, and that self-reported impacts are sustained over time." A local community course that raises wellbeing and pro-sociality: Evidence from a randomised controlled trial - ScienceDirect
All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Loneliness (March 2021) has launched its first independent inquiry report making the case for a ‘connected recovery’. A connected recovery | Action on loneliness (redcross.org.uk)
BBC/Wellcome Collection - The Anatomy of Loneliness (October 2018) - 55,000 people took part in the BBC’s Loneliness Experiment in collaboration with Wellcome Collection, making it the largest survey of its kind in the world. BBC Radio 4 - The Anatomy of Loneliness - Who feels lonely? The results of the world’s largest loneliness study
The Economist (31st August 2018) - Doctors and policymakers in the rich world are increasingly worried about loneliness. Researchers define loneliness as perceived social isolation, a feeling of not having the social contacts one would like. Loneliness is pervasive and rising, particularly among the young (economist.com)
Joseph Rowntree Foundation - Loneliness Resource Pack (31st October 2013) A set of resources to help individuals, groups, communities and neighbourhoods take a closer look at – and to reduce – loneliness. JRF and JRHT’s Neighbourhood approaches to loneliness has been a three-year action research programme exploring and identifying what makes us feel lonely where we live and work and what we can all do about it – personally and professionally. Loneliness resource pack | JRF
WHO launches commission to foster social connection (15 November 2023): WHO commission on social connection - Anyone, anywhere, can be lonely or socially isolated. Across all ages and regions, loneliness and social isolation have serious impacts on our physical and mental health, and the well-being of our communities and society. The WHO Commission on Social Connection (2024–2026) aims to see the issue recognised and resourced as a global public health priority. The Commission will propose a global agenda on social connection, working with high-level Commissioners to make the case for action, marshal support to scale up proven solutions and measure progress.
We need a public health approach to loneliness - BMJ editorial (February 2022) - Loneliness is costly to individuals and society; it should be a political priority. The public health and social measures implemented during the covid-19 pandemic highlight the importance of social capital to health and wellbeing. As many countries move into a new stage with the reduction and removal of many public health social measures, renewed energy is needed to rethink social and community connections in which “building back better” includes evidence based initiatives to deal with loneliness, especially among those most vulnerable. We need a public health approach to loneliness | The BMJ
The American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (Nov-Dec 2017) Social connection is a pillar of lifestyle medicine. Humans are wired to connect, and this connection affects our health. The Connection Prescription: Using the Power of Social Interactions and the Deep Desire for Connectedness to Empower Health and Wellness - PMC (nih.gov)
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000): Prof Robert Putnam Malkin Research Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University. Putnam's book brings together evidence from the previous quarter century, including nearly 500,000 interviews, measuring social capital. Findings include; 'Joining and participating in one group cuts in half your odds of dying next year', and 'Every ten minutes of commuting reduces all forms of social capital by 10%'.