LANA-project: Unravelling Loneliness: A Network Approach to Transforming Public Health

Loneliness is a crucial and urgent public health problem that requires more attention in health practice and science. Loneliness is shaped by interactions between a person and its environment, and interactions within an environment and within a person. Yet, this system-thinking is not adequately put to practice in public health/prevention. Therefore, we need system-based tools and knowledge. Key tools, available to public health/prevention, include surveys with metrics and analyses. These tools now insufficiently capture interactions between persons (social environment) and between person and environment. Thereby, their application in loneliness prevention cannot achieve its full potential in terms of knowledge building, health monitoring, and targeted policy-informing/resource allocation. Further, there are fundamental questions on which interactions shape loneliness. We lack knowledge on how communities and physical environment construct “lonelygenic environments”, what physical environment structure enables or deters social connection, and what quantity, function, and quality of social interactions, is key. Such knowledge allows more targeted resource allocation to promote social connection, for wide impact since a social environment impacts most health-outcomes. Further, there are questions on loneliness metrics, on how emotional and social loneliness symptoms interact, and how symptoms interact with other health-aspects/factors. Developing knowledge on these topics may advance public health to get better equipped to put system-thinking to practice to curb loneliness.

The LANA project attempts to develop such knowledge as we apply ‘network-analysis’ This is a system-science-method that deals with interactions, but this method is hardly/not applied in public health and prevention science and practice. In this project, a transdisciplinary team of social scientists, network experts, epidemiologists, and public health experts, will focus on testing two promising network analyses types: ego-social network analysis and statistical network modelling, and develop a novel framework to address loneliness to enrich the current public health and prevention toolbox.

We consolidate data from large population-based cohorts to:

1. Quantify how physical and social environments interact to form “lonelygenic environment” [WP1].
2. Quantify how quantity, function, and quality of peoples’ social interactions affect loneliness [WP1].
3. Quantify how loneliness symptoms interact in a network with each other, and other (health)factors [WP2].

Based on this knowledge and expert input we:

   4. Develop a framework of ‘loneliness’ that captures interactions between person and its environments [WP3]. This framework includes guidance and technical tools (metrics on ego-social network, ego-network analysis; metrics on loneliness-symptoms; network modeling scripts).

A diverse team of scientists and public health professionals applies network analysis, to seek answers and thereby develop innovative tools for application in public health practice and science, to accelerate understanding and equip public health with tools and knowledge to combat loneliness.

Researchers on the project Lynn Theunissen (PhD candidate), Karoline Huth (postdoc), Nicole Dukers (PI)

Other team members: Rik Crutzen (Health Promotion, Maastricht University), Hans Bosma and Anne-Marie Koster (Social Medicine Maastricht University), Lisanne Steijvers and Eveline Linssen (Public Health Service South Limburg), Denny Borsboom and Jonas Haslbeck (University of Amsterdam, Program-team Psychological Methods).

Funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), project number 406.23.SW.021.
https://www.nwo.nl/en/projects/40623sw021

Started 2025 (ongoing)