Creating age-friendly cities, communities and organizations: Best practices from the u.s

Age-friendly Cities and Communities initiatives aim to improve health outcomes by asking all stakeholders in a given place to look at their work through the lens of aging and change policy and practice to make their city or community more inclusive of older adults. This model - which requires the collaborative work of government and the private sector - is now in more than 100 cities around the world and evidence of effectiveness is growing. From street redesign to new employment policies to zoning code changes - lessons learned and best practices are increasingly important as municipalities prepare for the largest growth in the older adult population in history. This symposium highlights four applications of the age-friendly concept in the U.S. - at the city, community and organization level. Presenters come from Age-friendly Washington, D.C., Age-friendly NYC (whose leadership also provides strategic assistance to cities around the world), the Environmental Protection Agency's Building Healthy Communities for Active Aging initiative, and the Brownsville Partnership, a community development organization in one of New York's poorest neighborhoods. Presenters will focus on strategies and evidence of partnerships, programs, practices and policies which have positively impacted the health of the population each initiative aims to serve. The range in population size and initiative size amongst the presenters provide models for implementation in any U.S. community.