The Hope for a Better Framework: Reworking Our Underlying Understanding of Community 
Ashley Yukihiro, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO

In a culture that promotes individualism, there remains the longing for being together communally and belonging to a particular group. In a 2023 report on the loneliness epidemic, the U.S. Surgeon General commented on the need to be in a community, citing loneliness among individuals as the cause of higher mortality rates. However, this cited need to be in community is conceptually thin, only stating a “type” such as family, cultural/religious community, or social group. The same issue is seen in bioethics, where concepts such as relational autonomy, shared decision-making, or issues surrounding dementia patients rely on a perceived understanding of community. Some communal frameworks do seem to meet such needs, such as particular ethnic/cultural communities or religious communities. This paper will consider what has been commonly known as a community to understand what kind of community is needed to serve the needs of individuals. By analyzing bioethics and sociology literature, one can see what parts of a community are needed to fulfill a person's needs and evaluate measures by which a meaningful community can be developed. I argue that a robust definition of community is needed to help individuals who may be lonely, isolated, or have lost a sense of themselves. Understanding what a community is can help bioethicists recommend community solutions with a contextual understanding of how they work. It can also serve as a hopeful framework for broader societal use in thinking through the communities in which they partake.