Only The Beginning: Sustainable Strategies For Tackling Loneliness

When the UK Prime Minister launched the world’s first ever government-level loneliness strategy in 2018, she said it was ‘only the beginning of delivering a long and far reaching social change.’ That day, campaigners who had pushed the government to take action were thrilled – and excited about the prospect of helping to make its promise real. And yet, just a few short years later, the UK’s leadership on loneliness had stalled: by 2025, several key organizations driving impact had shuttered; national philanthropies that had sought to tackle loneliness for a decade had shifted their priorities; and a movement that had been in the ascendency fragmented as the world moved on to apparently more urgent issues.

This recording of a webinar held on June 2, 2026, brings together key leaders in the UK’s efforts to reduce loneliness with Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center leaders, to share learning from the international experience of working on loneliness, which has been labelled ‘one of the great challenges of our time.’ The panelists look at multifactorial questions including the importance of working within historical and policy contexts, the role of philanthropy and academia, the importance of community action and storytelling, political leadership, and cross-sector collaboration. The learnings from Alex Smith’s recent HKS Shorenstein Center report provide a framework for this wide-ranging conversation about what’s possible in social change more broadly in times of challenge and change. The webinar was co-hosted with The Jo Cox Foundation.

Speakers include:

• Liz Schwartz, HKS Shorenstein Center (Moderator)
• Tracey Crouch, Former UK Minister for Loneliness
• Alex Smith, HKS Shorenstein Fellow
• Olivia Field, CEO, Jo Cox Foundation
• Trey Leveque, Former Engagement Chief of Staff to Vivek Murthy, Social Connection Fellow, HKS MPP Alum