Voluntary associations and co-production of health promoting activities for older adults: Experiences and policy lessons from Denmark

Abstract

Demographic transitions in Europe accentuate the need to develop innovative solutions for healthy ageing. One increasingly popular policy approach is co-production between local governments and voluntary community associations (VCOs) to promote activities for health and wellbeing among older adults. While co-production has been studied from the perspective of local governments there is limited knowledge regarding how voluntary associations perceive their conditions. This study aims to fill this gap using survey data from voluntary associations in Denmark.The investigation is based on an electronic survey (n = 263) of VCOs engaged in activities relevant for healthy ageing in three Danish municipalities. The survey addressed 13 issues and potential problems within four categories – ‘’members and volunteers', 'economics, 'media and the public' and '´politics and the local government'.The paper presents a relatively positive picture of the potentials in municipal-VCO collaboration. However, we also find that a sizeable number of VCOs point to problems and obstacles particular in regards to recruitment of members and economics. While the municipalities in our study have all developed strategies to support VCOs and to promote coproduction it seems that there are deficits in the implementation of the strategies. This leads us to conclude that municipalities must pay close attention to the issues and conditions for VCOs in order to succeed with their policy initiatives in this area.