Developing rural insights for building age-friendly communities

Abstract

Notwithstanding a few exceptions, the global age-friendly literature remains mostly silent on the problem of the longer-term, sustainable implementation of age-friendly initiatives. This paper seeks to address this gap by presenting rural insights from a multi-site case study in Ontario, Canada, that considers the influence of unique, rural community contexts that may differentially impact parameters of success and longer-term sustainability among rural age-friendly programs. Findings from interviews with 46 age-friendly leaders across five rural communities demonstrate that contextual community factors directly affected rural age-friendly sustainability. Specifically, the presence of social connectivity (sense of community) created an opportunity for age-friendly sustainability, whereas a lack of geographic connectivity (jurisdictional fragmentation) presented a challenge. These contextual insights demonstrate an additional pathway to rural age-friendly sustainability – considering the social and jurisdictional level of age-friendly implementation prior to initial development, a pathway which reinforces the need for a specifically rural age-friendly agenda that supports rural older adults.