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Invited Commentary
July 23, 2012

Loneliness and Living Alone: Comment on “Loneliness in Older Persons” and “Living Alone and Cardiovascular Risk in Outpatients at Risk of or With Atherothrombosis”

Author Affiliations

Author Affiliations: Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, Department of Medicine, and Section of Health Policy and Administration, School of Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, and Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Yale–New Haven Hospital (Dr Krumholz), New Haven, Connecticut. Ms Bucholz is an MD/PhD student at Yale University School of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology.

Arch Intern Med. 2012;172(14):1084-1085. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2012.2649

Social Support —few concepts in epidemiology have proven more elusive to define. While the term is used loosely to describe the care and companionship we receive from family and friends, in epidemiology it refers to an abstract construct that has been linked to numerous health outcomes. As a result, social support has received considerable attention in the literature as an important disease prognosticator despite issues with measurement and lack of clear implications for applying this knowledge.

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