Loneliness affects around a quarter of the UK population. We suspect that it accounts for a disproportionate risk to living a healthy life. While loneliness is gaining greater traction as a public health issue, we do not yet fully understand the extent to which reducing loneliness would lower the associated health burden.

Nesta’s healthy life mission is interested in exploring how reducing loneliness can improve a person’s overall wellbeing and contribute to them living a healthier life for longer. Our overall aim is to improve the evidence that exists about the links between health and loneliness, in order to design and support new solutions that reduce loneliness in a way that has a positive impact on people's health. This focus will underpin all of the work we do.

Alongside building the evidence around the impact of loneliness on health we have identified three additional areas of focus that we will explore over the coming years.

Social prescribing is one of the most prominent solutions that is being rolled out nationally to tackle loneliness. However, there are still gaps in the evidence. Nesta aims to work with those delivering these interventions to build the evidence of the impact on loneliness and health outcomes by improving evaluation standards. We can then identify ways to optimise services that aim to reduce loneliness.

An important part of tackling loneliness is to ensure there is sufficient supply and access to good-quality community and social assets. Community and social assets include things in our wider environment like transport links, parks, community centres. It is also about how we feel in an area – whether we feel safe, or have friends or organisations that can support us. Our work will look to understand how access to social and community assets affects both loneliness and health. To begin with, we will explore this area through our work on social prescribing and health and loneliness.

We believe there are some areas where digital interventions could be used to reduce loneliness and improve a person's health outcomes. Our investments and venture studio teams will explore opportunities to build and scale new innovative technological or digital models to tackle loneliness.