She’s sitting in a chair by the window. It’s 2:14 p.m. on a Tuesday. The home health aide left two hours ago. Her daughter won’t call until after work. Her grandson is in school. The television is on, but she stopped watching it 20 minutes ago. She’s looking at the street.

These are the hours no one talks about. The hours between the medication check and the evening phone call, when 77 million Americans over 65 may sit alone, and no policy paper or caregiving bill or workforce initiative reaches them.

The cost of loneliness

The National Institute on Aging recently released the most extensive study ever conducted on loneliness and dementia, with 600,000 participants across 21 longitudinal cohorts. The findings should have made front-page news: loneliness increases dementia risk by 31%, a

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