Abstract
AbstractDeveloping age-friendly communities is a significant global policy issue. The World Health Organization's (WHO) age-friendly cities and communities initiative significantly influenced the development of Ireland's Age-friendly Programme. This article critically examines the utilisation of the WHO age-friendly planning framework in the context of Ireland. It explores older adults’ experience of living in a county which is currently implementing an age-friendly programme, and uses this analysis to assess how the age-friendly programme addresses older residents’ needs, and to illustrate how the WHO conceptual and planning framework has worked in Ireland. The article reports on a qualitative case study which used constructivist grounded theory to explore the lived experience of older adults. The research identifies salient social and cultural dimensions of the day-to-day lived experience of older people which, although they impact on the age-friendliness of the places in which they live, are downplayed or neglected in the WHO framework. In critically analysing the transfer and relevance of the WHO age-friendly model in light of broader issues such as diversity of place, the dynamic nature of person–place relations, and the interplay between age-friendly policy and other age-related public policy, the article suggests ways in which the use of the WHO framework can be modified to accommodate better the diverse experience of older adults in Ireland, but also in other geographic and cultural contexts.
Highlights
IntroductionThe major drivers of this development are rapid global population ageing and the impact of accelerated urbanisation (WHO, 2007; Phillipson, 2011)
This article explores the application of the World Health Organization (WHO) age-friendly concept in the development of an age-friendly county (AFC) programme in Ireland
In conclusion, this research critically analysed an AFC programme in Ireland which was strongly influenced by the WHO age-friendly approach
Summary
The major drivers of this development are rapid global population ageing and the impact of accelerated urbanisation (WHO, 2007; Phillipson, 2011) Accompanying these global trends, environmental gerontology has provided comprehensive evidence of the impact of person–place relations on older people’s quality of life (e.g. Scharf et al, 2005; Smith, 2009; Phillipson, 2011; Warburton et al, 2017), and there has been the parallel adoption of ‘ageing in place’ as a social policy goal in many countries (Lui et al, 2009). Influenced by these demographic, policy and research developments, numerous initiatives have emerged aimed at enhancing the relationship between people and place to make them more ‘age-friendly’ (Lui et al, 2009; Moulaert and Garon, 2016). In order to promote utilisation of the guidelines and support implementation of age-friendly programmes, the WHO established the GNAFCC in 2010
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