Informal Expert Meeting on Loneliness Interventions
On December 7th 2021, the JRC organised an informal expert meeting with academics, practitioners and policy-makers on interventions to address loneliness in Europe. The objectives of the informal expert meeting were to a) Inform the European Commission’s work on loneliness; b) Exchange and share knowledge on loneliness interventions and what works to tackle loneliness among researchers, NGOs and policy makers; and c) Build a network of intervention experts. Several key lessons and recommendations were drawn from the meeting. First, based on a recent meta-analysis, presented in the meeting, loneliness interventions are effective although it is not possible to identify a specific intervention with a large effect on loneliness reduction. In other words, there is no “one size fits all” solution to loneliness. Further research with solid methodological quality and larger number of participants is needed to deepen the understanding on what works to prevent and mitigate loneliness in different contexts. Second, several good examples of loneliness interventions across the EU already exist, as presented in the meeting, which can provide important lessons learnt for others in the field both from the intervention design and evaluation point of view. Finally, the meeting put an emphasis on collaboration and dialogue between researchers and practitioners as a key way to develop effective solutions to tackle loneliness and to transfer the current attention into more knowledge that will benefit all.
CASABIANCA Elizabeth;
NURMINEN Minna;
2022-03-11
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC128310
978-92-76-47042-7 (online),
OP KJ-07-22-024-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC128310,
10.2760/951562 (online),
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