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Author Ken Stern: Social Connection Is a Path to Living Longer — and Better
Longevity expert Ken Stern and AARP Foundation President Claire Casey discussed why connection, purpose and proximity matter for healthy aging.
Claire Casey and Ken Stern chat about the importance of connection for healthy aging.
Photo by Allison Shelley for AARP
In a recent “fireside chat” with AARP Foundation President Claire Casey, Ken Stern, founder and chair of the Longevity Project and author of the new book Healthy to 100, made a clear case for something often overlooked in conversations about health and aging: social connection.
In the U.S., discussions of health and longevity typically focus on physical health. But Stern’s research suggests that relationships matter just as much, if not more.
“We’ve been trained to think about fitness, nutrition, access to health care, even genetics, as the ingredients of healthy longevity — and they are,” Stern said. “But so is social connection.”
Connection as a Health Driver
Stern traced his focus on social connection to his research in Presidio County, Texas — one of the lowest-income counties in the state, and yet one where people live the longest. What explained the apparent paradox?
“It wasn’t about food. It wasn’t about exercise. It wasn’t about health care,” Stern said. “It was a story about social connection.”
In Presidio, multigenerational families live close together, with relatives in and out of one another’s homes daily, providing care, support, and a sense of belonging. Stern found similar dynamics elsewhere in the U.S. — from rural communities to dense urban neighborhoods — where social connection helped overcome the negative effects of poverty.
These communities weren’t the norm, but they still told a compelling story to Stern: “It always came down to social connection, purpose and community,” he said.
More than eight decades of research support the idea. Findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, widely acknowledged as the longest-running longitudinal health study ever, show that quality relationships — not income or professional success — are the strongest predictors of long-term health and happiness. Stern summarized the takeaway simply: “It’s the quality of the relationships with the people next to you and finding meaning and purpose in life.”
But there’s a problem in our modern society. Traditional sources of connection — like long-term careers in the same workplace or neighborhood stability — have declined. As Stern put it, “The world is full of lonely people waiting for someone else to take the first step.”
Why Volunteering Works
One of those first steps is something that just about anyone can take: volunteering.
“Volunteerism is the heart and soul of not just AARP Foundation, but all of AARP,” Claire Casey said, noting that AARP and AARP Foundation combined have over 60,000 volunteers nationwide. “It’s what makes our work possible.”
Volunteerism stood out in Stern’s research as one of the most reliable ways to build connection, particularly later in life. Programs like AARP Foundatin Experience Corps are a good example. Featured in 17 schools across the country, Experience Corps trains older adults as reading tutors for kids from kindergarten to third grade; not only have the children benefited, but the adult volunteers themselves have shown measurable health benefits — improvements tied not to changes in diet or exercise and presumably tracing to engagement and purpose.
Beyond the program’s primary mission, Experience Corps has also been a valuable source of data that has informed AARP Foundation’s plans to extend and improve its impact on the lives of older adults.
“Volunteerism is a perfect example of finding purpose, meaning and social connection in the second half of life,” Stern said.
Strategies for Building Connection
One of the most practical insights Stern shared was that social connection isn’t about personality — it’s about proximity.
“People form friendships through repeated, shared time,” Stern said, “at work, in schools and in structured activities like volunteering.”
“We have to design communities — through volunteering and other shared experiences — that make it easier for people to feel a sense of belonging,” Casey said.
Stern framed the challenge ahead as both cultural and structural. “The biggest change would be to say social health is public health — and actually commit to that idea,” he said.
For individuals, the message was equally hopeful. The years after 50 are not a time to withdraw, Stern emphasized, but a chance to invest in relationships, purpose and community.
“The secret of making those years successful,” he said, “is to treat them as valuable, as meaningful, and as purposeful as the years before.”
Learn more about fighting social isolation and building social connections and AARP Foundation’s volunteer programs.
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