People over the age of 60 are some of the most at risk for COVID-19. Health experts are advising seniors to be extra careful about exposing themselves to infection by taking steps to social distance and even isolate themselves from people who are carriers of the disease. But the very measures meant to keep people from getting infected may be causing other health issues, like loneliness.
On this edition of UWM Today, we look at how best to balance the desire to stay safe with the need to connect to the people around us. Colleen Galambos is our guest. She is a professor of social work and serves as the Helen Bader Endowed Chair in Applied Gerontology in UWM’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. Galambos is a member of a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that is investigating the link between social isolation and loneliness.
