The emotional health of older adults is an often overlooked component to aging well.

Louisville based Humana Foundation hopes to change that, with $12 million in grants for programs that address loneliness, chronic illness and other factors affecting seniors emotional health.

Our Christine talks with the CEO of the Humana Foundation to find out how these grants will help seniors right here in Kentucky.

This is part of our ongoing aging series, The Next Chapter that explores the rewards and challenges of growing older.

Joining us is Tiffany Benjamin, the CEO of the Humana Foundation.

Okay, Miss Benjamin, $12 million is a lot of money.

So how did the Humana Foundation zero in as singers emotional health as the key initiative?

Yeah.

So we have been focused on seniors for a really long time.

What we know is 1 in 4 seniors are socially isolated, and being socially isolated leads to increased risk of self-harm and dementia.

And so we know that mental health is tied to physical health.

The more connected you are to other people, the physically healthier you are.

And so we decided that we want to be a leader in senior emotional health.

Really leaning into social isolation and creating spaces for social connection for seniors.

Because emotional health is often overlooked, especially when you're talking about the older population where a lot of physical health problems start popping up.

Why is the emotional health often bypassed for the physical health in this population?

It's a great question.

We don't talk about it enough.

In Louisville alone, 40,000 seniors live alone.

We know that when you're alone, sometimes you can fall into depression.

Sometimes you get even less physically active.

Right?

Like, we've all felt that thing where you're like, oh, I'm by myself and I don't quite know what to do.

So if we want people to be more physically active, we want them to be more connected.

We have to get people up and find communities for them and give people positive opportunities to connect with other people.

Okay.

So how is how are these grants going to address that?

What programs, especially locally or in Kentucky, are going to receive some of these funds and what are they going to do with it?

Yeah, we're really excited.

We committed 1.4 or $5 million to programs here in Kentucky.

Examples include the Louisville Orchestra.

And what we're really funding there is the orchestra going across the state, across the Commonwealth and really holding programs in senior centers and community centers to get people connected through music and art and really just energized.

There's something really powerful about the way that art connects us.

And that is an example of that sort of powerful work.

We've also partnered with the Ali Center to support their compassion Index, where they are getting people to talk more and more about how we can treat others with compassion.

Find commonality amongst differences and and really look at the world in a positive way.

And we're funding them adding a senior council to that.

So we're talking about compassion for seniors with seniors toward seniors, super important work.

Partnering with other organizations like Dare to Care to focus on nutrition, partnering with the University of Kentucky on really exciting work to look at senior food insecurity, really to be sort of best in class in the nation, in tracking food insecurity for seniors.

The amazing for that to be here in Kentucky, where people go to find the source of data for how do we connect with seniors and understand what they're going through, and how do we support that?

Yeah, and dare to Care.

And tracking county level data on senior food insecurity.

That has to do with just nutrition for seniors.

So how does that impact emotional health?

How might that, improve?

Yeah, it's a great question.

You think about it this way.

If you're hungry, if you're isolated, if you're alone, all of these things connect together, right?

Your well-being is really many different pieces, and you need to make sure that you are well nourished so that you can actually think about your mental health, and that you can get active and physical and be out in community and get the help you need and find the people who you can connect with.

And so we have to look at the whole person.

And so our work around senior emotional health is making sure people have the resources they need to be mentally healthy.

And then utilizing the connections and resources they get to be physically healthy too.

How are you going to know if these grants to these programs are working?

Yeah, it's a great question.

And we are actually really unique in the fact that we track impact in our work.

So the Humana Foundation, unlike a lot of foundations, has a chief impact officer.

We make long term commitments to organizations.

Often our grants are 3 to 5 years long.

We give time for programs to grow.

And then we ask questions like, are you really connecting with seniors?

And can we track that with data?

So for example, when we think about social isolation, there's this thing called the UCLA Loneliness Index.

And a lot of our grants track.

Do people feel less lonely on that index after they have gone to a performance, after they have connected with their to care and had somebody maybe deliver their food?

Do they feel more connected?

We can track that.

We can use data to drive it, and we can use it to figure out what programs work really, really well and how can we scale those programs?

Okay.

Tiffanie Benjamin from the Humana Foundation, thank you so much for your time, and thank you for your work in this area.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Christy.

It's a joy to talk about the work, and it's a joy to serve community in this way.