Webinar, Panel
Life in Isolation post COVID May 27 update
- Future Milken Institute events will focus on U.S. stimulus and philanthropic relief, with a WebEx recording released online the day after the discussion and the final 20 minutes reserved for audience questions.
- Arianna Huffington anticipates that behavioral changes could address 75% of chronic diseases if fully integrated into the health system, while Thrive Global plans to reach hundreds of millions through employer partnerships like Walmart's wellness services for executives and frontline workers.
- Thrive is developing "microsteps" and school-based resilience programs to help individuals manage stress, with Huffington predicting a cultural shift toward accepting aging and valuing women's experiences, though she remains unconvinced social determinants like isolation will improve without massive, systemic change.
- Lisa Marsh-Ryerson projects that isolation and loneliness will gallop among low-income women due to unemployment and that older adults, both previously isolated and newly affected, face increased risk even as restrictions lift due to the unavailability of widespread testing, tracing, and vaccines.
- Marsh-Ryerson warns that social contact cutoffs will cause acute confusion and disorientation in older populations and plans to drive closed-loop systems between healthcare and community organizations to raise awareness of this burden.
- Scott Kaiser aims to identify lonely individuals to break vicious cycles of isolation, expanding the Motion Picture and Television Fund's "Daily Call Sheet" model from 300 recipients to more, and creating a "Call Hub" platform for organizations to establish volunteer call programs.
- Kaiser plans to facilitate intergenerational connections between high school and college students and frail older adults, noting that students themselves are vulnerable to loneliness during their educational years, and hopes for a "building back better" vision of cross-border institutional collaboration.
- Nora Super expects the rapid shift to telehealth to permanently benefit mental health care once trust is established, predicting increased access to linguistically matched caregivers and physicians, while the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging and the Motion Picture and Television Fund plan another event on July 1st.