Stage
Phase 1 — Active
Timeframe
5 Years / 2026-2031
Phase 1 — Active
5 Years / 2026-2031
Social Vital Sign: Making Social Connection Part of Care
We check blood pressure, heart rate and temperature as a matter of routine. Yet social isolation, which carries health risks on par with well-known factors like smoking, is rarely asked about at all.
Social Vital Sign sets out to change that. The program builds social isolation screening into everyday care, so that loneliness and disconnection are noticed as reliably as any other vital sign. When a need is identified, social prescribing connects people with community programs, volunteers and supports that help them reconnect.
SVS is being delivered across three partners: Bruyère, Niagara Health and Seniors Newfoundland. Working in hospital, health system and community settings allows us to learn what it takes for screening and social prescribing to work in different places, for different people. Six linked research streams examine how the approach is implemented, experienced and sustained.
Co-created with patients, caregivers, frontline clinicians and community partners, and supported by a $1.9M investment from the Waltons Trust, SVS asks a practical question: what would it look like for health systems to treat social connection as part of health? The goal: a health system where no one's isolation goes unseen.
