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NORC at the University Chicago

Louise Hawkley

Pronouns: She/Her

Senior Fellow
The Bridge at NORC
Louise is a nationally recognized expert on loneliness and health during aging.

Louise is a field-leading expert on loneliness and social isolation and their associations with health during aging. At NORC, she leads research and analyses centered on identification of factors that increase risk for loneliness and individual and environmental sources of changes in loneliness. Her publications include more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.

Louise acts as a co-investigator on the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a National Institute on Aging funded panel study of health and social factors among older adults in the United States. Additionally, she is the Principal Investigator of NSHAP’s COVID-19 supplemental study, which ran from 2020 to 2021. She also consults on NIA-funded NSHAP-related projects that explore the role of social factors in the diabetes disease course and another that extends NSHAP into a nationally representative sample of LGBT older adults.  

Louise is a member of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Society on Aging. She is an international speaker and served as an expert witness for the solitary confinement case, Ashker v. Governor of California, 2015. Louise is a founding member of the International Loneliness and Isolation Research Network (ILINK), and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the national Foundation for Social Connection.

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Expertise

Education

PhD

The Ohio State University

MA

The Ohio State University

BA

Bethel College, KS

Project Contributions

National Social Life, Health & Aging Project

A pioneering nationally representative study of the intersection between social and intimate relationships and healthy aging

Client:

National Institute on Aging

National Social Life, Health, and Aging COVID-19 Study

Assessing how resilience or vulnerabilities might affect older adults

Client:

National Institute on Aging

Publications

Research Library & Findings