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Extension's Role in Addressing Social Isolation.

At a recent Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Community and Public Health Program Work Team (PWT) meeting, the topic of social isolation was discussed. Groups of Extension educators from across New York State spoke about how their existing work supports people navigating social isolation. There were also a number of ideas on how Extension could play a larger role in partnership with other health-focused community-based organizations to address this issue.

What are folks doing in your LGU to support people navigating social isolation? Things to consider as our we explore our reality after the last two-plus years. There is an interesting article attached to this post that delves deeper into the issue.

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The Building Resilient Inclusive Communities Program (BRIC) includes a focus on reducing social isolation and loneliness. It's a collaboration between CDC, DNPAO, and National Association for Chronic Disease Directors.  Funding flows through state health departments.It would be interesting to find out if any funded states collaborated with Extension.

https://chronicdisease.org/bric/

Really important topic. We are looking at how we can "multisolve" this issue. How to engage older adults in our work and in the community (building social connections) while connecting them with critical community resources and even involving them in programs like Aging Mastery and or Powerful Tools for Caregivers, depending on what they need and are interested in. The more resources and tools in our toolbox, the better!

We often talk about mental health and extension's role in addressing mental ill health symptoms: substance use, addiction, other anti-social behaviors. We rarely consider our role in working on "root causes" or social-environmental determinants of mental health disparities or low/poor social-emotional well-being among subpopulations (e.g., diverse demographics-age, gender, race, ethnicity, rural, etc.). We also tend to miss opportunities to plan and work across sectors & systems to identify and collectively address social issues that impact the diversity of our constituents AND ourselves.

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The Extension Foundation was formed in 2006 by Extension Directors and Administrators. Today, the Foundation partners with Cooperative Extension through liaison roles and a formal plan of work with the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP) to increase system capacity while providing programmatic services, and helping Extension programs scale and investigate new methods and models for implementing programs. The Foundation provides professional development to Cooperative Extension professionals and offers exclusive services to its members. In 2020 and 2021, the Extension Foundation has awarded 85% of its direct funding back to the Cooperative Extension System, 100% of funds are used to support Cooperative Extension initiatives. 

This technology is supported in part by New Technologies for Ag Extension (funding opportunity no. USDA-NIFA-OP-010186), grant no. 2023-41595-41325 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Extension Foundation. For more information, please visit extension.org. You can view the terms of useat extension.org/terms.

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