How Can the Lived Environment Support Healthy Ageing? A Spatial Indicators Framework for the Assessment of Age-Friendly Communities

The Age-Friendly Cities and Communities Guide was released by the World Health Organization over a decade ago with the aim of creating environments that support healthy ageing. The comprehensive framework includes the domains of outdoor spaces and buildings, transportation, housing, social participation, respect and inclusion, civic participation and employment, communication and information, and community and health services. A major critique of the age-friendly community movement has argued for a more clearly defined scope of actions, the need to measure or quantify results and increase the connections to policy and funding levers. This paper provides a quantifiable spatial indicators framework to assess local lived environments according to each Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (AFC) domain. The selection of these AFC spatial indicators can be applied within local neighbourhoods, census tracts, suburbs, municipalities, or cities with minimal resource requirements other than applied spatial analysis, which addresses past critiques of the Age-Friendly Community movement. The framework has great potential for applications within local, national, and international policy and planning contexts in the future

Parents, infants and apnoea : an examination of life after an ALTE

Abstract not availabl

Age-friendly care for older adults within rural Australian health systems : An integrative review

Objectives To identify the core elements of interventions and models that facilitate age-friendly care for older adults within rural Australian health systems, and assess the extent to which these align with core elements of the Institute for Health Improvement's (IHI) Age-Friendly Health Systems 4Ms Model. Methods Peer-reviewed journal articles examining core elements of Australian rural geriatric care models were collected and analysed using an integrative review methodology. Results Identified models and interventions addressed all four core elements of the IHI model—what matters, medications, mobility and mentation. There was more evidence relating to mobility and mentation, with lesser evidence relating to medications and what matters. A series of core elements not aligned with the model were also identified. Conclusion The IHI 4Ms Model appears to be applicable in the rural Australian context. More high-quality, systematic evidence is needed to investigate the core elements of age-friendly care across diverse rural contexts

Healthy ageing literature review

In August 2012 the National Ageing Research Institute (NARI) and the Council on the Ageing (COTA) completed the Healthy ageing literature review for the Department of Health on evidence for effective strategies to promote healthy ageing. The review includes an overview of Australian and Victorian health policy and demographic context. It then discusses the evidence for various determinants of healthy ageing including healthy lifestyle factors and age-friendly environments. Finally it examines the strategies that have been used to promote healthy ageing in various settings and presents the current evidence base in relation to the effectiveness of these strategies for promoting health with older people. As this report is for the Department of Health it has a focus on issues that the department is able to contribute to addressing. While this report acknowledges and identifies the many broad issues affecting healthy ageing, the strategies reviewed and identified relate to the areas that the Department of Health is most able to influence