Almost a week ago we had the pleasure to be invited to the Volkswagen foundation theme week on loneliness. In the beautiful Schloss HerrenHausen in Hanover there were 4 symposia at the same time. The symposium that we attended was organized by our consortium leader Maike Luhmann from the Ruhr University Bochum.
The title of this symposium was :” The Next Big Questions on Loneliness: Integrating National and International Perspectives on Research and Policy Priorities”.
Every time there are multiple symposia at the same time you wish you were able to to clone yourself because the other symposia were also very interesting I’m actually quite diverse. I think that we had about 150 people there and we took one big picture with everyone on it at the back of the building overlooking the beautiful landscaped gardens.
The speakers in the symposium were as said the combination of policymakers and researchers. Researchers from the UK Denmark ireland’s Finland Manchester Italy and Germany and policymakers from the bundesland North Rhine Westphalia but also in the German federal ministry for Education Family affairs Senior citizens Women and Youth BMBF SFJ (and yes that is the acronym that they are actually using for this ministry/also present were members of European Parliament like Evelyn Regner and Bernd Lange).
All of the work package leaders were there and most of them presented or participated in the symposium as a speaker. What was interesting was the combination of research and policy. Why is this interesting because of the fact that researchers have a different view on loneliness, I would say a scientific view how does loneliness come about what are the pathways what do we need to study in order to get a complete picture or a more complete picture. Policy makers are also interested in loneliness as it is a societal problem that we really need to solve.
They need to know what interventions work and which ones do not. Evidence Readiness Levels (ERL) could help determining the ‘fit for use’ of certain interventions so Policy makers can easily see the ones that could be used.
Evidence Readiness Levels are suggested to be the equivalent of Technology Readiness Levels originally developed by NASA to indicate at what level a technology currently is, e.g. prototype or ready for market.
One of the most interesting remarks of the conference came from Prof. Dr. Pamela Qualter and MEP Bernd Lange. They described circumstances / situations that make people more vulnerable for loneliness but they are not typical interventions. We talk about the availability of public transport, housing and shops in communities. In cities this is typically less of an issue (although not every city has adequate public transport) but in rural areas this is increasingly a problem.