Chamber of Commerce Data: Washington D.C. is the ‘Loneliest City’ in America

For the second year in a row, Washington, D.C. tops the Chamber of Commerce's list of the loneliest cities in the U.S. Nearly half of the households in Washington, D.C. are people that live alone, the analysis found.According to Census Bureau data, there are 326,970 one-person households in Washington, D.C. and an overall, 158,840 residents live alone, which is a 3% year-over-year increase from 2021.

Laurie Theeke, associate dean for the George Washington University School of Nursing has done extensive research on the problem of loneliness and understanding how it influences the human health experience. She has completed multiple quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies with interprofessional teams, working together to understand how we can help lonely people. Theeke enjoys intervention development and has developed LISTEN, a theoretically framed and structured intervention designed to target loneliness.