Skip to main content

Call for Papers - Loneliness and social isolation

Guest Editors:

Feifei Bu: University College London, UK
Thomas K.M. Cudjoe: Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA
Michelle H. Lim: School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Australia
Harry Owen Taylor: University of Toronto, Canada

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 31 October 2023


BMC Public Health has launched a collection which calls for submissions on loneliness and social isolation as a public health concern. Although loneliness and social isolation are commonly misconstrued as conditions existing on an individual scale, these are global public health issues which are linked to various physical and mental conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, depression and a weakened immune system. These social conditions are mildly correlated and can occur at the same time but they are not mutually exclusive as a socially isolated person is not always lonely and conversely a person experiencing loneliness is not necessarily socially isolated.

Meet the Guest Editors

Back to top

Feifei Bu: University College London, UK

Dr Feifei Bu is a senior research fellow in Statistics/Epidemiology at the Department of Behavioural Science and Health, UCL. Her research focuses on the impact of social and cultural factors on health, including loneliness and social isolation. She has a strong interest in administrative data and statistical methods.


 

Thomas K.M. Cudjoe: Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA

Dr Thomas K.M. Cudjoe is the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Endowed Professor, Assistant Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore. He leverages community-based strategies, mixed-methods and human centered design to understand and address social isolation. Additionally, he has led studies that examined the prevalence of social isolation among older adults and associations between social isolation and health outcomes. Dr Cudjoe also serves on the Scientific Advisory Council for the Foundation for Social Connection. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and on Good Morning America.

Michelle H. Lim: School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Australia

Dr Michelle Lim is the Chief Scientific Advisor and Chairperson for Ending Loneliness Together a national Australia network made up of universities and industry partners. Dr Lim is recognised as Australia’s leading scientific expert on loneliness and the lead author of the Australian Loneliness Report (2018) and the Young Australian Loneliness Survey (2019). Her work informs the Australian government, not-for-profit, and corporate sector. Her findings notes that one in four Australians aged 12 to 89 report problematic levels of loneliness. Dr Lim also cofounded the Global Initiative on Loneliness and Connection, an international coalition of organisations across 12 countries committed to ending the pressing global issue of loneliness and social isolation. She was the inaugural co-director of the global not-for-profit organisation in 2020-2022 and now the deputy co-chair of the international scientific advisory board (2023-present).

Harry Owen Taylor: University of Toronto, Canada

Dr Harry Owen Taylor’s research addresses the prevalence, risk factors, and associative health outcomes of social isolation and loneliness among older adults, with specific emphasis on Black Americans. His research increases public awareness of these factors and is poised to inform risk assessments, intervention programs, and policies to mitigate the adverse health effects of isolation and loneliness.  He has received extramural funding for his research from the National Institute of Aging, and his research has been published in peer-reviewed outlets.  His work has also been featured in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Public Health Post, Aging Today, Wired.com, and US News and World Reports.

About the collection

Although loneliness and social isolation are commonly misconstrued as conditions existing on an individual scale, these are global public health issues which are linked to various physical and mental conditions including high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, depression and a weakened immune system. These social conditions are mildly correlated and can occur at the same time but they are not mutually exclusive as a socially isolated person is not always lonely and conversely a person experiencing loneliness is not necessarily socially isolated. 

There is an urgent need to unravel the drivers of these social conditions, to develop interventions to tackle them and to understand which sub-populations of society are at a greater risk of persistent and high levels of loneliness. 

BMC Public Health has launched a collection which calls for submissions on loneliness and social isolation as a public health concern and encourages submissions on:

  • Evidence-based loneliness programmes and interventions
  • Protective measures against loneliness and social isolation
  • Social factors contributing to loneliness and social isolation such as housing, poverty, education and inequality
  • Mitigating the effects of loneliness and social isolation
  • Responses to loneliness and social isolation in the Covid-19 pandemic 
  • Health risks of loneliness and social isolation
  • Public awareness campaigns dealing with stigma and stereotypes around loneliness

  1. Living alone has been positively associated with the prevalence of depressive symptoms. We examined how a combination of living alone and pet ownership relates to depressive symptoms.

    Authors: Haruka Miyake, Yosuke Inoue, Hiroko Okazaki, Toshiaki Miyamoto, Masafumi Eguchi, Takeshi Kochi, Isamu Kabe, Aki Tomizawa, Ami Fukunaga, Shohei Yamamoto, Maki Konishi, Seitaro Dohi and Tetsuya Mizoue
    Citation: BMC Public Health 2023 23:1769
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

Back to top

This Collection welcomes submission of Research Articles. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select ["Loneliness and Social Isolation"] from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.