Search

Background and Objectives: The age-friendly cities and communities (AFCC) agenda has led to a range of policy initiatives aimed at supporting aging in place for older people. While there is case study evidence of how people age across urban contexts, there has been little research exploring cross-national understandings of age-friendly places among older people. The objective of this article is to identify the place experiences of older people living across cities and communities in India, Brazil, and the United Kingdom and to discuss implications for the AFCC agenda., Research Design and Methods: A total of 300 semistructured interviews were undertaken with older people across 9 cities and 27 communities in India, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis undertaken by each national team and then discussed and revised at collaborative workshops with researchers from each of the 3 country teams., Results: The data capture the ways in which place is constructed from the perspective of older people drawing upon social, community, and cultural dimensions of aging across diverse urban environments. We explore how older people negotiate place in the context of their everyday life and identify the relational and interconnected ways in which place attachment, belonging, and identity are constructed., Discussion and Implications: Age-friendly interventions need to attend to the changing physical, social and cultural dimensions of aging and place. Integrated place-making practices are required to support older people to age in the right place across rapidly transforming urban contexts globally., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Purpose: Transdisciplinary research has the potential to enhance the real-world impact of the field of aging and technology. This is a context-driven and problem-focused approach to knowledge production that involves collaboration across scientific disciplines and academic and nonacademic sectors. To sustain broader implementation of this approach, a scoping review was conducted on the impact of this approach on research processes, outcomes and uptake. Materials and Methods: A systematic search was conducted of aging, health/medicine, and technology literatures indexed in three electronic data bases (Medline/OVID, EBSCO, ProQuest) from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2015. Search terms included three themes: (1) transdisciplinarity; (2) research outcomes and (3) social change. Results: Twenty articles met the inclusion criteria. We found that a transdisciplinary approach to research enhances integration of diverse knowledge, scientific and extra-scientific outcomes, capacity to engage in translational research and the uptake of research knowledge. We also identified a number of facilitators and barriers to successful implementation of this approach. No articles evaluating transdisciplinary research specifically in the context of aging and technology were found. Conclusions: Adoption of transdisciplinary research in aging and technology may foster greater uptake of technological innovation in the real-world by supporting integration of diverse knowledge and enhancing engagement of experiential and nonacademic stakeholders in the research and development process. However, supporting successful implementation of this approach requires investment of personal and structural resources. More research is needed to better understand the evidence base on the adoption of this approach in aging and technology projects. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Transdisciplinary research is context-driven and problem-focused and involves collaboration between academic and non-academic sectors. A transdisciplinary approach can enhance knowledge integration, scientific productivity and capacity and public involvement in research. Future research is needed to determine the effectiveness of transdisciplinarity for optimizing the development and uptake of assistive technologies.

Purpose of the Study: Home and community engagement are key contextual factors for aging well, particularly for older adults in vulnerable social positions. A community-based participatory action research project conducted in Western Canada examined how to best use the shared amenity spaces in a low-income seniors' apartment complex in order to connect services and programs with tenants and to provide opportunities for service providers and local stakeholders to build upon and create new relationships toward collaboration and service delivery., Design and Methods: Pre-move deliberative dialogue workshops (n = 4) were conducted with stakeholders (e.g., service providers, developers, and municipal government employees). Workshop participants (n = 24) generated ideas and plans on how physical and social environments can contribute to the social engagement of senior tenants., Results: Shared dialogue led to community investment and asset sharing by integrating the knowledge and experiences of multiple stakeholder groups into the planning process. This article highlights how collaborative planning approaches for the effective use of the social environment (e.g., social programming), within the physical environment (e.g., amenity and community spaces), can generate rich and illuminating data for informing enhancements in the social environment of apartment dwelling low-income seniors. Contextual challenges to service provision are discussed, including the need for communication about and coordination of on-site programming, culturally diverse and responsive programming, and long-term funding., Implications: Prolonging independent community living with the assistance of support services should be a goal to both delay premature relocation into institutional care and meet the preferences of older adults., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

This paper reports on in-depth research, using a grounded theory approach, to examine the ways in which very old people perceive healthy ageing in the context of living alone at home within urban settings in five European countries. This qualitative study was part of a cross-national project entitled ENABLE-AGE which examined the relationship between home and healthy ageing. Interviews explored the notion of healthy ageing, the meaning and importance of home, conceptualisations of independence and autonomy and links between healthy ageing and home. Data analysis identified five ways in which older people constructed healthy ageing: home and keeping active; managing lifestyles, health and illness; balancing social life; and balancing material and financial circumstances. Older people reflected on their everyday lives at home in terms of being engaged in purposeful, meaningful action and evaluated healthy ageing in relation to the symbolic and practical affordances of the home, contextualised within constructions of their national context. The research suggests that older people perceive healthy ageing as an active achievement, created through individual, personal effort and supported through social ties despite the health, financial and social decline associated with growing older. The physicality and spatiality of home provided the context for establishing and evaluating the notion of healthy ageing, whilst the experienced relationship between home, life history and identity created a meaningful space within which healthy ageing was negotiated., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: The aim of this work is to examine the relationship between aspects of objective and perceived housing and aspects of healthy aging, defined as independence in daily activities and subjective well-being. Furthermore, this research examined the comparability of relationships between housing and healthy aging in the five European countries., Design and Methods: Data were drawn from the ENABLE-AGE Project, from home interviews with a sample of 1,918 very old people aged 75 to 89 years living alone in their own homes in Swedish, German, British, Hungarian and Latvian urban areas., Results: Participants living in better accessible homes, who perceive their home as meaningful and useful, and who think that external influences are not responsible for their housing situation are more independent in daily activities and have a better sense of well-being. Moreover, these results apply to all five national samples., Implications: The findings can widen the perspective when striving for barrier-free building standards, to encompass a holistic approach that takes both objective and perceived aspects of housing into account. Home modification and relocation should not be prescribed, but need to be negotiated with older adults to take into account their personal preferences.

The aging-in-place agenda supports the right of seniors to live in their preferred environment, as the place where they can retain a sense of independence and control in old age. This right is compromised for vulnerable seniors who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Causes of homelessness in old age are complex, and pathways into and out of homelessness are multifaceted, including financial insecurity, relationship breakdown, and addiction, compounded by barriers to accessing services, shrinking social support networks, and complex health challenges. Addressing the multidimensional nature of homelessness in old age requires holistic solutions that bring together the knowledge and expertise of multiple stakeholders, not least seniors themselves. With this aim, this paper reports on findings from multistakeholder community dialogue sessions conducted across Metro Vancouver with seniors’ organizations, service providers, and local government to prioritize the challenges of senior homelessness in Metro Vancouver and propose strategies and solutions for addressing the issue. The paper highlights some of the ways in which services and housing supports can be designed to support older adults who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]