Murrysville native recruits fellow MIT students, others to battle social isolation among seniors

Bhav Jain, 19, of Murrysville knows how he felt during the early stages of covid, forced to return home from his freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to learn from home.

But even now, back in Boston to finish up his sophomore year, Jain is still thinking the effect that social isolation is having — particularly, its effect on the country’s home-bound seniors, who are finally beginning to see an end in the form of mass vaccinations.

“I recently spoke with my grandmother, who lives in India,” Jain said. “Ever since covid started (last) March, she hasn’t had the chance to leave her home. She’s been inside.”

Jain’s grandmother “expressed her desire to have various opportunities available that could help her and other seniors,” he said.

With that in mind, he and several MIT classmates set out to recruit student volunteers to reach out to senior homes offering a variety of programs.

They range from simple check-in calls, to a pen-pal program matching young people with local seniors, community health classes, and educational programming in the arts and sciences through the Connected Foundation.

It’s run by a team of 13 people, primarily students from Boston-area schools including MIT, Harvard and Wellesley, along with other schools from the U.S. and abroad.

“We got more than 70 applications in just the Boston area, itself,” Jain said. “So we’ve built up a team of more than 40 volunteers and directors focused on our four programs.”

He’s most excited about a health advocacy initiative that’s starting shortly. Volunteers will help seniors navigate Medicare and Medicaid, and schedule doctor’s appointments via Zoom.

“The numbers largely show that while nearly all seniors in the nation have access to Medicare, very few use it for mental health services,” he said. “So we’re very excited to see our own grandparents go through these programs and try to improve their health outcomes.”

The foundation also has a dedicated data collection team tracking those outcomes and adjusting the team’s approach based on results.

“We want to understand which of our key programs is working the best and figure out how we can improve them,” he said.

A September 2020 study published in the Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging concluded that social isolation of seniors during the pandemic was reported to cause anxiety, depression, poor sleep quality and physical inactivity. Former U.S. Surgeon General (and current nominee) Vivek Murthy stated in 2016, long before the covid-19 pandemic, that loneliness and social isolation constituted a very real public health crisis in need of addressing.

In operation for about a year, the Connected Foundation team has worked with residents at three nursing homes so far, and will begin outreach to Pennsylvania nursing homes in late March.

The foundation was recently awarded a grant from the Cambridge Community Foundation, and Jain said he would like to open chapters at schools throughout Massachusetts and try to expand from there.

“We’re hoping that even after the pandemic, many of these connections are sustained,” he said. “We’re hoping to show that having these inter-generational connections improves the mental health of both the senior and the young person they’re working with.”

For more, see ConnectedFDN.com.