Building a less lonely community in North Central Florida.
Public policy, innovative startups, and creative social infrastructure projects
to create cities that are healthier, more connected, and less lonely.
Building social infrastructure in North Central Florida
On the Community page, I outlined some of the ways projects and groups that are finding ways to create more socially connected communities. How can we create the kind of projects and actions that will lead to a less lonely community here in North Central Florida? What resources are available for those of us locally who want to help make a change?
The University of Florida’s Counseling and Wellness Center provides a search tool to help you find a mental health professional in our area who specializes in the type of care you need. The search tool allows you to filter your search by areas of expertise, insurance accepted, gender, and other useful criteria. It can be hard to find someone local just by doing web searches, so give this tool a look.
Existing mental health resources in North Central Florida
Although there are no local groups or projects in North Central Florida specific to the topic of loneliness that I have found, there are a lot of resources for general mental health available from local groups and providers. Instead of giving you a long list, I have collected some links to lists and resources that have already been created.
If you know of a useful or relevant local resource related to increasing authentic social connection, please add it using the form at the bottom of the page.
How can you build social infrastructure locally?
On May 21, 2020, members of all of North Central Florida’s mental health providers and stakeholders met to discuss new ideas and plan the future. Highlights of the coalition’s future goals are below, as well as some of my own ideas for how we can create a less lonely community.
To help citizens understand the challenge of loneliness and social connection for what it is, governments at all levels can address the problem as a health issue. As discussed on the Learn page of this site, each year brings new evidence that isolation and lack of authentic social connection is an important public health problem. In a Scientific American essay, “To Combat Loneliness, Promote Social Health,” public health researcher and advocate Kasey Killam makes the case for this as health priority for governments and public policy groups.
If this sounds like a strange idea, you should know that the United Kingdom appointed a Minister of Loneliness in 2017, and over the last three years they have created a number of programs to address the problem, as well as funding the Campaign to End Loneliness, a program to help resolve loneliness among seniors, one of the most at-risk segments of the population.
Many of these programs could be copied effectively here in the United States.
Startup culture is often the first way innovative solutions to public problems come to the public. The need here is great, as well as the opportunity, and some startup companies and technology projects have started to take advantage of the opportunity.
Governments and philanthropic organizations can spark creative solutions and development by funding challenges like the Tech to Connect Challenge held in 2019 across the UK.
In the United States, health insurance companies should be actively involved in research and funding promising ideas to address the challenge of loneliness – not just for the public good, but because reducing isolation and loneliness will lead to dramatically lower costs from a wide range of medical conditions that research shows are related to or worsened by loneliness.
There are some steps in this direction. For instance, health insurer CIGNA conducted one of the largest surveys on loneliness in 2018 and updated the research in 2020.
Organizations that promote mental health as a whole have started to create specialized resources designed to treat the problems of loneliness and isolation.
Many more steps need to be taken on this path by health organizations at all levels.
Coming soon.
Add a local resource
Know of a group, organization, or project relating to loneliness or positive social connection in the Gainesville, FL area? Please let us know by adding it to the form. Thanks!
