The training is part of a pilot project aimed at integrating the healthcare system into the Vincles project

On September 5th, Montferrer i Castellbò hosted a training session for primary care and Sant Hospital de La Seu d’Urgell healthcare staff who serve the population of this municipality. The goal was to incorporate these professionals and the healthcare system as a whole into Vincles, a project that focuses on detecting and preventing unwanted loneliness.

This initiative is a pilot program led by the iSocial Foundation and the Alt Urgell Care Consortium, supported by the Social and Healthcare Innovation Hub (HISS). It aims to integrate the healthcare system into Vincles, which has been rolled out since last year across six regions of Alt Pirineu and Aran under the leadership of regional Social Services. The goal is to ensure that, in the future, responses to unwanted loneliness among the elderly become a sphere of integrated social and healthcare services across these six regions.

So far, the Vincles Alt Pirineu-Aran project has been driven by the Social Services of the six regions within the Alt Pirineu and Aran territories. In collaboration with them, 53 social and demographic indicators have been established, allowing the identification of potential risks of unwanted loneliness in a geolocated manner through a data analysis tool. Once risk areas are identified, Vincles intervenes by activating the community network and fostering social engagement.

With the pilot launching this week in Montferrer i Castellbò, additional health-related indicators will be incorporated into Vincles, improving accuracy in detecting loneliness risks. Furthermore, healthcare professionals will become an integral part of the support network for individuals experiencing unwanted loneliness in this municipality, both during the detection phase, using the aforementioned health indicators, and during the intervention phase, by prescribing community activities and collaborating with the Social Services teams of Montferrer i Castellbò and the Alt Urgell region.

This pilot represents a significant step in the expansion of the Vincles project and its adaptation to address loneliness from an interdisciplinary perspective, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of life for people in the Alt Pirineu-Aran territories.