Solutions for Social Isolation: What We Can Learn from the World

Solutions for Social Isolation: What We Can Learn from the World / Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2020. "In 2017, RWJF’s Global Ideas for U.S. Solutions team issued a Call for Proposals (CFP) titled “Developing Solutions for Social Isolation in the United States: Learning from the World,” whose purpose was to learn how other countries were dealing with the challenges of social isolation and how to adapt those promising ideas to the United States. RWJF received 200 proposals spotlighting a wide variety of global models for addressing social isolation that either have been or could be adapted to the United States, ultimately funding six projects which bring ideas from abroad to communities across our nation–transporting solutions from Iceland to Anchorage, Brazil to Baltimore, and more. This brief shares what we have learned from this process, and points to future opportunities for addressing social isolation—from raising the visibility of social isolation and its root causes, to implementing screening to aid with early identification and prevention, to building an evidence base around promising interventions, and exchanging best practices across borders. "