Wisconsin county launches task force to address loneliness and isolation in older adults

In 2023, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a report called “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” The report noted that half of all Americans reported feeling disconnected from their friends, families and communities. Murthy said in the introduction: “Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death.”

Now Portage County is using a grant funded by the American Rescue Plan Act to create a task force to address social isolation among older adults and people with disabilities living in rural Wisconsin. The Rural Community Connections Task Force is made up of volunteers, community leaders, and local businesses and aims to improve social connections. 

“I run a senior center,” Kate Giblin, the grant writer and coordinator of the task force, told the Michigan Independent. “Two weeks ago, a gentleman said this is life-saving for him. He lives alone. He doesn’t have family nearby, and if he didn’t have this, he’s like, I don’t know what I would do. I have other people say this is their happy place.” 

In his report, Murthy wrote that the “mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day and even greater than that associated with obesity and physical inactivity.”

According to studies published by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging, loneliness and social isolation lead to an increased risk for heart disease, depression, and cognitive decline. 

Giblin, a gerontologist and the manager of the Aging & Disability Resource Center of Portage County (ADRC) in Stevens Point, said she wrote the grant because although there are many existing resources available for older adults and people living with disabilities, she saw barriers to accessing to those programs. 

“We have lots of amazing programming, like, you can come here and take a computer class. You could come here and paint or learn ceramics or exercise. But, for example, it is 30 freaking below zero out today, and if — and I serve the whole county — but to get from Amherst, Wisconsin, to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, is a drive on a highway, and the weather is not good, it’s cold, it’s expensive,” Giblin said. 

“As you move out of county seats and areas that are a little bit more resource-dense into places where resources are further apart, for people who are older adults and for people who are nondrivers, people with disabilities, those barriers of transportation, barriers of weather, come into play significantly,” she continued. 

Giblin said the task force focuses on existing community spaces that people are already using in their own communities — libraries, sewing circles, ham radio clubs — and helps them attract more people.. 

“So in those communities where they already have informal support, we are hoping to lift those up, lift up their places, and familiarize people from the county seat and countywide service organizations with those groups, with an intention of connecting those things in a stronger way and connecting each other in a stronger way,” Giblin said. 

The task force hosted several winter community events in Rosholt, Amherst, Junction City, Almond, and Plover, offering free transportation, food, music, and entertainment. 

The grant ends March 31, 2025, and Giblin said they plan to bring together around 40 community organizations and figure out how to sustain what’s been built over the last nine months. 

“What is sustainable is this concept that we can all come together, because every group, whether it’s AODA [alcohol and other drug abuse], whether it’s suicide prevention, whatever you’re working on is intersected by isolation and loneliness,” Giblin said. “We’re all impacted by that.”