“Many Folks Who Are Not Socially Isolated Are in Fact Lonely. This Is a Complicated Problem that Comes in a Lot of Different Forms.”

The Resonance Test 57: Sachin Jain

Loneliness: It’s hurting us. Dr. Sachin Jain, President and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan, has been talking about and treating the scourge of loneliness for years. Now he discusses this with Gaurav Rohatgi on the latest episode of The Resonance Test. Jain reveals the roots of his obsession: It started with an undergraduate course with Robert Putnam and his book Bowling Alone, which “showed us all the importance of social connection to social outcomes.” The dialogue ventures into the world of social media (“We’ve substituted a lot of community participation with online connection”) and COVID (a friend of Jain’s said about the pandemic: "I’ve spent more time with my son in the last six months than I had in the previous five years of his life”). Jain recalls his Togetherness Program at CareMore, in which “small nudges ultimately translated into fewer admissions and better health outcomes for the people who were part of the program” and covers his recent work at SCAN: “We employ a number of our senior citizen members to make regular outreach phone calls to fellow members.” It’s a fascinating and occasionally paradoxical conversion. Jain says that loneliness “is not a complicated problem to solve,” while at the same time maintaining that “This isn’t simple work—it’s simple on the surface but it’s quite meaningful and quite emotionally complicated when you actually dig into it.” We suspect you’ll dig it a lot.

Host: Kenji Ross
Editor: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon