By Lisa Watts
Measuring progress in addressing loneliness and isolation among older adults can be complicated.
Greater awareness of the social isolation that older adults experience is spurring the development of more programs and initiatives to address the issue. But researchers at the University of Massachusetts Boston are finding that measuring progress in addressing loneliness and isolation is complicated.
“There’s a spectrum of experiences of isolation and individual interpretations of social connections are obviously varied,” says Caitlin Coyle, director of the Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging (CSDRA) at UMass Boston’s Gerontology Institute and a research fellow at the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston. “There’s also a lot of stigma around loneliness and isolation, making people less inclined to self-identify on a questionnaire.”
Boston’s Age Strong Commission turned to Coyle for help in shaping a request for proposals for a grants program designed to help local nonprofit organizations work at the grassroots level to build social connections for older adults in the city. Age Strong also partnered with CSDRA to evaluate the impact of the grants.
“No single intervention can solve isolation; it has to be as diverse as the people represented,” says Coyle. “One of the things we are seeing in these grant programs is that making space for people to engage and inviting them to participate is powerful.”
Read more at the Gerontology Institute Blog.