The ASEM Global Aging Center has issued a Korean translation of the World Health Organization (WHO) 's Advocacy Brief, 'Social isolation and loneliness among older people.' Rapid global population ageing and the public health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic have brought to light the seriousness of social isolation and loneliness among older people. The Advocacy Brief summarizes and discusses the scale of social isolation and loneliness and the adverse impact they can have on older people and makes recommendations on how to tackle them. As part of the Decade of Healthy Ageing that the WHO launched in 2020, this Advocacy Brief sets the direction of its future research and projects on this issue.
According to the Advocacy Brief, social isolation and loneliness among older people are widespread, with 20-34% of older people in China, Europe, Latin America, and the United States feeling lonely. It has shown that they can shorten older people's lives and damage their mental and physical health, thereby undermining their quality of life. On the basis of this, it suggests three main strategies to address these problems.
- Implement and scale up effective interventions to reduce social isolation and loneliness;
- Improve research and strengthen the evidence for what works; and
- Create a global coalition to increase the political priority of addressing the issue of social isolation and loneliness among older people.
AGAC's translation of the Advocacy Brief into Korean is aimed to raise awareness of this issue among the Korean public and researchers alike, as well as to join the global endeavor to reduce social isolation and loneliness. You can find the Korean translation of the Advocacy Brief both on the AGAC's and WHO's websites alongside its original English version. (Link, WHO Web Page)
