The cross-border project euPrevent PRevention OF Loneliness older people in the Euregio, or euPrevent PROFILE for short, stimulates cross-border cooperation with the general aims to prevent and combat unwanted loneliness in older people, promote knowledge exchange, best practices, and implementations, increase awareness on effects of loneliness, and last to connect people, experts, and organizations who have already been active in this field.
Examples of activities will be the organization of a citizen summit to stimulate intergenerational exchange, development of audiovisual material to elicit awareness or development of guidelines, and training on what to do when an older person feels lonely.
These activities center around three main action points:
- promoting intergenerational exchange,
- creating awareness in professionals/ citizens, and
- guidelines and best practices.
These actions and their activities involve several target groups, including the vulnerable and older people at risk, local public authorities, healthcare professionals, non-professionals (such as volunteers), social movement associations for older people, and the general public. Addressing loneliness is a delicate matter. The concept of Healthy Ageing, (described by the WHO) that focuses on wellbeing in older age, will serve as a framework, together with the assessment results from the previously successful Interreg Senior Friendly Communities project (SFC). PROFILE will combat loneliness in vulnerable older people living in the EMR by taking social, societal, and cultural differences into account.
