Emergent Challenges and Opportunities to Sustaining Age-friendly Initiatives: Qualitative Findings from a Canadian Age-friendly Funding Program

ABSTRACT

Age-friendly initiatives often are motivated by a single funding injection from national or sub-national governments, frequently challenging human and financial resources at the community level. To address this problem, this paper examines the challenges and opportunities to sustaining age-friendly programs in the context of a Canadian age-friendly funding program. Based on a qualitative thematic content analysis of interview data with 35 age-friendly committee members drawn from 11 communities, results show that age-friendly sustainability may be conceptualized as an implementation gap between early development stages and long-term viability. Consistent over-dependence on volunteers and on committees’ limited capacity may create burnout, limiting sustainability and the extent to which communities can truly become “age-friendly”. To close this implementation gap while still remaining true to the grass-roots intention of the global age-friendly agenda, sustainable initiatives should include community champions, multi-disciplinary and cross-sector collaborations, and systemic municipal involvement.

KEYWORDS:

• Age-friendly communities
• rural aging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Applied Health Research (NLCAHR)’s Newfoundland and Labrador Healthy Aging Research Program (NL-HARP) Doctoral Dissertation Award [n/a]; Canada Research Chairs program [n/a]; Trent University Office of Research and Innovation [24672]; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Insight Development Grant [430-2017-00724].