The holidays are often thought of as a joyful time, but for many people they can be very lonely. A Harvard study from 1938 found that the effects of loneliness on a person’s health are just as powerful and negative as smoking and alcoholism.
One of the populations that’s most vulnerable to loneliness during the holiday season is seniors — a quarter of people age 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated. Dr. Paul Weiss, president of the Oasis Institute, joined KMOX to talk more about the issue, and how the Oasis Institute seeks to help.
“We give older adults all these different ways to connect with other people through lifelong learning,” Weiss said. Those ways include cohort-based learning, purposeful volunteering, tutoring, and teaching technology literacy.
“There's a fallacy that older adults can’t continue to learn. And we of course, engage older adults in all this skill development, from foreign language to arts to music, to learning how to use the iPhone and the internet,” Weiss explained.
However, when the pandemic hit, the Oasis Institute had to change course and implement a way for seniors to keep learning virtually.
“I asked my team to do what sort of felt like the impossible, which was figure out how to launch a virtual education center nationally for older adults,” Weiss said. “And we did it by June of 2020. We launched Oasis Everywhere. All of our programs are live and interactive. It's lifelong learning. It's group exercise, its social connection.”
Oasis Everywhere teaches older adults how to use Zoom, troubleshoot their computers, set up a help desk, and more. Plus there are courses on arts and humanities, literature, film, Tai Chi, music appreciation, yoga and more.
“We've developed thousands of committed users of this interactive, virtual education center and it looks like it's going to be permanent,” Weiss said.
Hear more about Oasis Everywhere and how it helps to increase sociality in seniors:
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