Second phase of the Healthy Loneliness project

Las Naves and the Health & Wellbeing Area (SABIEN) of the ITACA Institute of the Universitat Politècnica de València have participated today in the preparatory meeting for the second phase of Healthy Loneliness, the European project that combats unwanted loneliness in the elderly. And they have done it together with the rest of the project partners: Paris, which participates through the E-Seniors entity; the University of Lodz and two institutions that are incorporated in 2020: the University of Coimbra and the Network of Collaboration of Reference Sites (RSCN), European forum of innovation on active and healthy aging.

Las Naves innovation center and ITACA-SABIEN are the institutions responsible in Valencia for developing the project, providing tools for the elderly who are alone so that they can combat the feeling of unwanted loneliness, increase their self-esteem and have an aging active and healthy. For this, and during 2019, different activities and workshops were carried out, financed by EIT Health, in which around 80 elderly people from the Algirós neighborhood of the city of Valencia participated, as well as 50 professionals from Health, Social Services, companies and NGOs that work in the area.

Carlos Galiana, Councilor for Innovation and Knowledge Management, stressed that “unwanted loneliness in the elderly is a problem that we have to face and that also affects their health. In our city there are more than 40,000 people over 64 who live alone and, of them, three out of four are women.” “During 2019 we acted with this project in the Algirós neighborhood and, as we said, our wish was that the workshops could be moved to other neighborhoods in the city soon. And so we are going to do it during this year 2020”.

The final objective, as in the rest of the pilots that Las Naves launches, was that these actions could reach a greater number of people living alone in our city. And, in this way, during 2020 the workshops will also be carried out in other neighborhoods, which are currently confirmed, in addition to Algirós, Poblats Marítims, San Isidro and La Roqueta.

In this second phase of Healthy Loneliness, as a result of the evaluation results of last year, some new features will also be incorporated. One of them will be that the workshops to be carried out will be customized according to the main needs of each neighborhood and, in addition, volunteer staff will be trained so that the fight against unwanted loneliness can continue once the project ends. Likewise, technical personnel of the project will be able to train professionals on unwanted loneliness in Valencia based on the results of the project.

Las Naves and ITACA-SABIEN have had the collaboration of other areas of the City of Valencia in this task: Markets and the Office of Energy, Social Services and the Elderly.

The Healthy Loneliness project follows in the wake of others initiated in Las Naves and aimed at the promotion of active aging, as is the case of Activage, which monitors older people living alone in order to continue maintaining their autonomy, or the Cultural Active Program that fuses physical activities with museum visits.

Conference “Loneliness in Valencia”

The results of the first phase of the Healthy Loneliness project, carried out during 2019, will be presented at the “Loneliness in Valencia” day, which will be held on January 28 in the afternoon at Las Naves innovation center.

Source: Las Naves