Loneliness is increasingly recognized as a serious risk to the health and well-being of older adults, linked to heightened risks of depression, cognitive decline, chronic illness and even early mortality. A new research project launching this year will tackle this pressing public health challenge, “Universal belonging: A place-based intervention to reduce loneliness.”
Led by researchers at the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville, this five-year project seeks to identify and reduce loneliness among seniors aged 65 and older by combining neighborhood-level data, community engagement and targeted, place-based interventions.
“We are deeply grateful to the Humana Foundation for supporting this effort to find new ways to help seniors live healthier lives in Louisville and across Kentucky” said Ted Smith, Ph.D, co-director of the Humana Center for Community Health Research at UofL.
This initiative builds on the work of the Universal Basic Neighborhood (UBN) project, a framework developed to discover and promote the core resources neighborhoods offer that have been shown to support good health. Through the UBN project, researchers identified social connection as a key ingredient in healthy communities, and loneliness, especially among seniors, as a critical risk factor for poor health outcomes. The new project applies UBN’s data-driven approach to address this challenge, using demographic, clinical and environmental data.
“This project represents a direct application of this place-based framework to a real and growing need in our community,” said Lauren Anderson, a UofL researcher who developed that place-based data model for this work as part of her dissertation research.
The project continues a collaboration with Nancy Seay, Ph.D., with The Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. Center for Racial Justice and the Department of Sociology at Simmons College of Kentucky, who will lead the asset mapping and community-based research components of the study. Their work will focus on identifying both social needs and existing assets within the neighborhoods selected for intervention, helping to ground the study in the lived experience and local context of older adults.
Over the course of the study, researchers will work with community partners to test a variety of neighborhood-based strategies aimed at fostering social connection. The project will also gather new insights on how local infrastructure and community design influence emotional well-being in aging populations. While target neighborhoods are still being identified, the project team is also actively seeking organizations that serve seniors to join as collaborators and subject matter experts. Interested partners are encouraged to visit the project website to learn more about how to get involved.
Funding for this work is provided by the Humana Foundation, whose commitment to community health and equitable aging has made this study possible.
How to participate:
- For seniors: Enroll in the study by taking the Baseline Loneliness Survey *Coming in July 2025*
- For partners: If you serve the senior population, contact Cayley.Crum@louisville.edu
- For volunteers: To help with outreach, survey collection or event support, contact Cayley.Crum@louisville.edu
