Julianne Holt-Lunstad shaping national strategy for social connection
Loneliness damages your health as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
When BYU professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad drew this conclusion from a meta-analysis she led, she was making a point that she’s made over and over in her career studying social connectedness: loneliness doesn’t only affect your emotions, it harms your body.
It’s a message that resonates in a high-tech, pandemic-weary, lonely world. Holt-Lunstad’s succinct analogy between loneliness and smoking has been scripted into TV medical dramas and quoted repeatedly in media headlines. And, thanks to her rigorous research and adept communication, Holt-Lunstad has become a world-renowned expert on the relationship between social connectedness and physical well-being.
In the past two years alone, Holt-Lunstad served as a subject matter expert for the CDC’s Social Determinants of Health Committee, helped develop a National Academy of Sciences consensus report on social media and adolescents and was appointed to the World Health Organization Technical Advisory Group on Social Connection.
She was especially honored to be selected by the U.S. Surgeon General as the lead scientific editor of an 81-page advisory on loneliness, published last May. Her work on the advisory is a career highlight because the report’s very existence gives weight to the message she’s been sharing for decades.
“The Surgeon General’s Advisory is a huge step in educating the public,” Holt-Lunstad said. “For so long, isolation and loneliness have been seen as a mental health issue, and most people don’t recognize that it actually impacts our physical health and ultimately, survival. To have the U.S. Surgeon General, ‘the nation’s doctor,’ acknowledge the importance of this for public health is really quite significant.”
Holt-Lunstad did most of the writing for the report, which proposed the first-ever framework for a national strategy to build social connection. The report underwent peer review by more than 50 experts.
“Dr. Holt-Lunstad’s groundbreaking research shed scientific light on an important human phenomenon — the feelings of loneliness that we all experience,” said Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General. “Her tireless work over the years has helped move this issue from the periphery of medicine to its rightful position as a public health priority. We are deeply grateful for her contributions to the field and to the advisory our office released last year.”
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
In the short time since the advisory’s publication, Holt-Lunstad’s efforts have paid off. There are at least three proposed legislative bills based on the advisory: to establish a national strategy for social connection, to create national measures of social connection and to address isolation and loneliness in older adults. Additionally, 42 states have voluntarily adopted loneliness as an official health measure.
Holt-Lunstad has been working toward these changes for years, her expertise sought out in part because of her ability to make her research relatable, as she demonstrated in her comparison of loneliness to smoking. In addition to her 2023 accomplishments, in the past she has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging and advised the U.K. government in their appointment of a Minister for Loneliness. Among many media engagements, she’s shared her research on CNN, the BBC and “This American Life,” as well as in a TED Talk.
But though her work has global reach, Holt-Lunstad’s investment in social connection is rooted in her own life.
“Loneliness often isn’t visible,” Holt-Lunstad said. “We might be able to look at various prevalence rates, but you never know who might be struggling. It’s important not to make assumptions and to give people the benefit of the doubt. Recognizing that some may be facing difficult challenges, I try to approach them with compassion, as they may be open to sharing some of those things with you.”
She’s seen the profound effects of loneliness firsthand. In 2022, when she was asked by the New England Journal of Medicine to contribute an article educating physicians about the health effects of social connection, Holt-Lunstad started her piece with a story about her own family.
She described how she lost both her parents in 2021 within 17 days. Isolated during the pandemic, her father’s cancer went undiagnosed until it was late stage; missing her companion of 60 years, her mother reached for him from habit, fell out of bed and died days later from complications.
“I was hesitant to share that story out of respect for my family and my parents,” Holt-Lunstad said. “So I showed an early draft to my five siblings to see what they thought. Not only did I get their permission, but all of them felt the story had a powerful message others needed to hear, to bring the human side into it.”
Holt-Lunstad also brings the human side of her research into her classroom at BYU, where she teaches as a professor of psychology and neuroscience. Aware that young adults are especially vulnerable to the effects of loneliness, she tries to foster connection among her students. In one graduate seminar, for example, she asked her students to pull out their phones and find a photo to share that brought them joy.
“It was interesting because every single one of their stories tied into something I had planned to talk about that day,” Holt-Lunstad said. “One was of a grandma, so I was able to talk about the importance of intergenerational relationships. One was about playing in the snow with friends, and I was able to talk about the importance of nature. It was a way not only for us to connect, but it also deepened how I could talk about the material in a way they could feel connected to.”
Whether in the classroom or around the world, as she moves forward with her research Holt-Lunstad plans to continue promoting human connection.
“We have already made a significant impact,” she said. “I want to make sure people know just how important healthy social connections are for our well-being, for our physical and mental health, for our safety and prosperity.”
