Age-Friendly Cities and Communities: Research to Strengthen Policy and Practice

ABSTRACT

Since the early 2000s, a global age-friendly movement has emerged with aspirations to make environments and systems within localities more supportive of long and healthy lives. Despite growth in the social movement over the past decade, research on how to work toward community change, especially in systematic and comprehensive ways across diverse geo-political and sociocultural contexts, has been relatively slower to develop. This special issue of the Journal of Aging & Social Policy aims to accelerate this area. It features articles that advance knowledge on processes and contexts toward enhancing the age-friendliness of cities and communities. In this introductory essay, we provide background on the age-friendly cities and communities movement – including its accomplishments alongside key challenges. We then discuss the importance of research at the intersection of policy and practice to strengthen the movement into the 21st century. Next, we introduce the articles in this special issue, organized under four themes: implementation and sustainability processes; partnerships and multisectoral collaboration; theory-based program design; and policy and practice diffusion. A final article provides an overview of the career contributions of Dr. Frank Caro, an age-friendly champion and gerontologist to whom this special issue is dedicated.

KEYWORDS:

• Age-friendly environments
• age-friendly communities
• age-friendly policy
• healthy aging
• innovation
• intervention
• prevention
• social determinants of health
• praxis
• social change

Key points

• The age-friendly cities and communities movement has grown considerably since the early 2000s.

• Research on practice and policy is important for addressing challenges facing the movement.

• Articles in the special issue report findings and perspectives to optimize policy and practice for age-friendly progress.

• The articles examine four main areas: implementation and sustainability processes; partnerships and multisectoral collaboration; theory-based program design; and policy and practice diffusion.

• The final paper provides an overview of the career contributions of Dr. Frank Caro, who dedicated nearly 60 years of academic and professional activity to gerontology and aging services.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported, in part, by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/N002180/1), The Grotta Fund for Senior Care, The Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust (RL-2019-011).