A new survey from Gallup shows one in five U.S. adults report feeling lonely daily. According to the survey, this is the highest level in two years.
In 2023, the Surgeon General declared a loneliness epidemic in the U.S. While progress has been made an estimated 52 million Americans still struggle with loneliness.
Laurie Theeke, associate dean for the PhD in Nursing Program at George Washington University School of Nursing has done extensive research on the problem of loneliness and understanding how it influences the human health experience. She has completed multiple quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies with interprofessional teams, working together to understand how we can help lonely people. She developed LISTEN, a theoretically framed and structured intervention designed to target loneliness.