Giving, Receiving, and Doing Together: Interorganizational Interactions in Age-Friendly Community Initiatives

ABSTRACT

Multi-sectoral collaboration is widely considered essential for age-friendly community change; however, there has been little empirical research to describe the ways in which organizations interact as part of age-friendly community initiatives (AFCIs). We conducted a qualitative descriptive study using data from multiple waves of semi-structured interviews with core teams of eight grant-funded AFCIs in the north-eastern U.S. We employed iterative, inductive coding to systematically describe ways in which AFCI core teams described working with other organizational entities. Findings indicated two overarching themes: (a) helping each other (giving and receiving linking, informational, and instrumental assistance), and (b) doing something together (organizing community events, planning collaborative projects, participating in meetings). We discuss the implications of this characterization for guiding research, evaluation, and policy to optimize AFCI implementation and impact across diverse settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• community practice
• neighborhood
• social capital
• conceptual development
• organizations
• coalition
• program evaluation
• qualitative analysis/methods
• qualitative descriptive study

Key Points

• Age-friendly core teams assist and do activities with their organizational partners

• Assessing interorganizational ties is an approach for age-friendly evaluation

• Policy to support organizations driving age-friendly collaboration is important

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation and The Grotta Fund for Senior Care.