Book
How to strengthen your social muscles
Social scientist Kasley Killam wants you to know that spending time with people you love is good for your health.
She studies social health, which focuses on wellbeing related to human connections. A growing body of evidence links such interactions to physical health outcomes, including longevity. A 2021 analysis of studies that collectively enrolled nearly 1.5 billion participants from around the world found that people were from 11 to 53 percent more likely to die from any cause if they had poor social health, as measured by things like the strength of their family ties and the frequency of their social contact. Research suggests the link may be causal.
Social health was first defined in 1973 by Robert D. Russell, a long-time professor of health education at Southern Illinois University. Killam encountered the term in 2013 as a research fellow at Stanford and was surprised to find not much work had subsequently been done on the subject. She spent the next decade expanding understanding of social health and elevating it as a wellness practice.
A self-described introvert, Killam found that social health does not require being a social butterfly, though that is one of four styles she identified in her book, The Art and Science of Connection. Each style has its own social needs and approaches to connection. A quiz she developed about the styles with the New York Times has been taken by people around the world, which she says has her excited about studying social health in different cultural contexts. She talked with Harvard Public Health senior editor Amy Roeder.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
HPH: How did you first get interested in social health?
Killam: In my last semester as an undergraduate, I did a personal experiment where I did an act of kindness every day for 108 days. The number 108 carries quite a few auspicious meanings, but most importantly to me, it’s the number of beads in a Buddhist mala used in meditation. Acts of kindness were my daily mala beads. The experiment was transformative, opening my eyes to the opportunities for connection all around me and showing me the value of prioritizing social health.
Sign up for Harvard Public Health
Delivered to your inbox weekly.
HPH: What are the mechanisms linking social health and physical health outcomes?
Killam: One theory with a lot of evidence is the idea of stress buffering. Loneliness is a very stressful experience, especially when it’s prolonged. It can lead to heightened levels of cortisol and increased inflammation. Over time, this can make us more susceptible to illness and disease. In contrast, when you feel connected and have supportive relationships, it can buffer against those pathways, and actually help us prevent disease and be healthier.
Another mechanism is through social norms. For example, when you have friends who encourage you to adopt healthy habits like eating good foods, who model exercising regularly, or who invite you to go do activities, those kinds of things are going to influence your health. So, the mechanisms are both biological and behavioral.
HPH: You’ve talked about wanting to shift the conversation on loneliness away from fixing what’s wrong to promoting what’s right. Why is that distinction important?
Killam: Loneliness is just one sign of poor social health. And talking about loneliness can be off-putting and actually make people feel worse. However, framing a conversation around social health, connection, and community is empowering and uplifting. It’s just a mental shift that helps make the conversation more approachable to a lot of people.
HPH: What types of interventions are needed to address social health at the population level?
Killam: Action is needed across different sectors of society—health care, education, design and technology, government, business. That’s actually empowering because it means each of us has a role to play and can make a difference.
I think social prescribing is very promising. There are going to be challenges with implementation, but it’s something that needs to be considered. I’ve also been very inspired and learned a lot from a program that we launched at my nonprofit, Social Health Labs, in community micro grants. We’ve given $1,000 grants to individuals across the U.S. to do projects in their local neighborhood to bring people together and improve social health. [One of them is] Haley Ingersoll, whose project blossomed into the grassroots group Pittsburgh Social Health. The power of one person taking action and then seeing the ripple effects of that is really incredible.
HPH: If people take one thing away from your book, what do you hope it will be?
Killam: No matter who you are, no matter your circumstances, no matter your personality, there are steps that you can take to strengthen your own social muscles and improve social health in the community around you.
Book cover: HarperOne
Republish this article
<p>Understanding your “social health style” boosts wellbeing and helps fend off loneliness.</p>
<p>Written by Amy Roeder</p>
<p>This <a rel="canonical" href="https://harvardpublichealth.org/mental-health/survive-the-loneliness-epidemic-by-working-your-social-muscles/">article</a> originally appeared in<a href="https://harvardpublichealth.org/">Harvard Public Health magazine</a>. Subscribe to their <a href="https://harvardpublichealth.org/subscribe/">newsletter</a>.</p>
<p class="has-drop-cap">Social scientist Kasley Killam wants you to know that spending time with people you love is good for your health.</p>
<p>She studies social health, which focuses on wellbeing related to human connections. A growing body of evidence links such interactions to physical health outcomes, including longevity. A 2021 analysis of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8473615/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">studies</a> that collectively enrolled nearly 1.5 billion participants from around the world found that people were from 11 to 53 percent more likely to die from any cause if they had poor social health, as measured by things like the strength of their family ties and the frequency of their social contact. Research suggests the link may be <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827318303501" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">causal</a>.</p>
<p>Social health was first defined in 1973 by Robert D. Russell, a long-time professor of health education at Southern Illinois University. Killam encountered the term in 2013 as a research fellow at Stanford and was surprised to find not much work had subsequently been done on the subject. She spent the next decade expanding understanding of social health and elevating it as a wellness practice.</p>
<p>A self-described introvert, Killam found that social health does not require being a social butterfly, though that is one of four styles she identified in her book, <a href="https://www.kasleykillam.com/social-health-book" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Art and Science of Connection</em></a>. Each style has its own social needs and approaches to connection. A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/09/well/mind/friendship-style-quiz.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">quiz</a> she developed about the styles with the <em>New York Times</em> has been taken by people around the world, which she says has her excited about studying social health in different cultural contexts. She talked with <em>Harvard Public Health </em>senior editor Amy Roeder.</p>
<p><em>This interview has been edited and condensed.</em></p>
<p><strong>HPH: How did you first get interested in social health?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Killam:</strong> In my last semester as an undergraduate, I did a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/18/harvard-trained-social-scientist-did-acts-of-kindness-for-108-days.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">personal experiment</a> where I did an act of kindness every day for 108 days. The number 108 carries quite a few auspicious meanings, but most importantly to me, it's the number of beads in a Buddhist mala used in meditation. Acts of kindness were my daily mala beads. The experiment was transformative, opening my eyes to the opportunities for connection all around me and showing me the value of prioritizing social health.</p>
<p><strong>HPH: What are the mechanisms linking social health and physical health outcomes? </strong> </p>
<p><strong>Killam:</strong> One theory with a lot of evidence is the idea of stress buffering. Loneliness is a very stressful experience, especially when it’s prolonged. It can lead to heightened levels of cortisol and increased inflammation. Over time, this can make us more susceptible to illness and disease. In contrast, when you feel connected and have supportive relationships, it can buffer against those pathways, and actually help us prevent disease and be healthier.</p>
<p>Another mechanism is through social norms. For example, when you have friends who encourage you to adopt healthy habits like eating good foods, who model exercising regularly, or who invite you to go do activities, those kinds of things are going to influence your health. So, the mechanisms are both biological and behavioral.</p>
<p><strong>HPH: You've talked about wanting to shift the conversation on loneliness away from fixing what's wrong to promoting what's right. Why is that distinction important?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Killam:</strong> Loneliness is just one sign of poor social health. And talking about loneliness can be off-putting and actually make people feel worse. However, framing a conversation around social health, connection, and community is empowering and uplifting. It’s just a mental shift that helps make the conversation more approachable to a lot of people.</p>
<p><strong>HPH: What types of interventions are needed to address social health at the population level?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Killam:</strong> Action is needed across different sectors of society—health care, education, design and technology, government, business. That’s actually empowering because it means each of us has a role to play and can make a difference.</p>
<p>I think <a href="https://harvardpublichealth.org/mental-health/uk-experiments-with-social-prescribing-as-mental-health-crisis-grows/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">social prescribing</a> is very promising. There are going to be challenges with implementation, but it's something that needs to be considered. I've also been very inspired and learned a lot from a program that we launched at my nonprofit, Social Health Labs, in community <a href="https://www.socialhealthlabs.com/microgrant-winners" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">micro grants</a>. We've given $1,000 grants to individuals across the U.S. to do projects in their local neighborhood to bring people together and improve social health. [One of them is] Haley Ingersoll, whose project blossomed into the grassroots group <a href="https://www.instagram.com/pghsocialhealth/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pittsburgh Social Health</a>. The power of one person taking action and then seeing the ripple effects of that is really incredible.</p>
<p><strong>HPH: If people take one thing away from your book, what do you hope it will be?</strong></p>
<p class=" t-has-endmark t-has-endmark"><strong>Killam:</strong> No matter who you are, no matter your circumstances, no matter your personality, there are steps that you can take to strengthen your own social muscles and improve social health in the community around you.</p>
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-S1L5BS4DJN"></script>
<script>
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
if (typeof gtag !== "function") {function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'G-S1L5BS4DJN');
</script>
Republishing guidelines
We’re happy to know you’re interested in republishing one of our stories. Please follow the guidelines below, adapted from other sites, primarily ProPublica’s Steal Our Stories guidelines (we didn’t steal all of its republishing guidelines, but we stole a lot of them). We also borrowed from Undark and KFF Health News.
Timeframe: Most stories and opinion pieces on our site can be republished within 90 days of posting. An article is available for republishing if our “Republish” button appears next to the story. We follow the Creative Commons noncommercial no-derivatives license.
When republishing a Harvard Public Health story, please follow these rules and use the required acknowledgments:
- Do not edit our stories, except to reflect changes in time (for instance, “last week” may replace “yesterday”), make style updates (we use serial commas; you may choose not to), and location (we spell out state names; you may choose not to).
- Include the author’s byline.
- Include text at the top of the story that says, “This article was originally published by Harvard Public Health. You must link the words “Harvard Public Health” to the story’s original/canonical URL.
- You must preserve the links in our stories, including our newsletter sign-up language and link.
- You must use our analytics tag: a single pixel and a snippet of HTML code that allows us to monitor our story’s traffic on your site. If you utilize our “Republish” link, the code will be automatically appended at the end of the article. It occupies minimal space and will be enclosed within a standard <script> tag.
- You must set the canonical link to the original Harvard Public Health URL or otherwise ensure that canonical tags are properly implemented to indicate that HPH is the original source of the content. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
Packaging: Feel free to use our headline and deck or to craft your own headlines, subheads, and other material.
Art: You may republish editorial cartoons and photographs on stories with the “Republish” button. For illustrations or articles without the “Republish” button, please reach out to republishing@hsph.harvard.edu.
Exceptions: Stories that do not include a Republish button are either exclusive to us or governed by another collaborative agreement. Please reach out directly to the author, photographer, illustrator, or other named contributor for permission to reprint work that does not include our Republish button. Please do the same for stories published more than 90 days previously. If you have any questions, contact us at republishing@hsph.harvard.edu.
Translations: If you would like to translate our story into another language, please contact us first at republishing@hsph.harvard.edu.
Ads: It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support Harvard Public Health.
Responsibilities and restrictions: You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third-party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Harvard Public Health recognizes that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties aggregate or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
You may not republish our material wholesale or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You may not use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
Any website on which our stories appear must include a prominent and effective way to contact the editorial team at the publication.
Social media: If your publication shares republished stories on social media, we welcome a tag. We are @PublicHealthMag on X, Threads, and Instagram, and Harvard Public Health magazine on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Questions: If you have other questions, email us at republishing@hsph.harvard.edu.
More in Mental Health
This Detroit Islamic center offers free mental health care for anyone in need
A new book captures 12 Profiles of people living with mental illness
