ATHOL — Friday, March 11, marked the final day for North Quabbin residents over 50, or caregivers of older adults, to complete the “age-friendly” survey distributed throughout the area by LifePath of Greenfield. The survey sought input on topics ranging from daily exercise to internet availability, and from nutrition to health care and financial security. Now comes the work of compiling results and determining how responses can be used to improve the lives of older residents from Athol to Greenfield.
Speaking with the Athol Daily News, LifePath Age-Friendly Program Manager Nour Elkhattaby Strauch said, “According to AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), by 2034 there will be more people over the age of 65 in the U.S. than people 18 or under for the first time in the history of the U.S. That’s actually happening faster in Massachusetts, and even faster in western Mass in the towns that we serve.”
Elkhattaby Strauch said the purpose of the survey was to identify both the challenges and the opportunities that come with these demographic changes.
“We’re trying to see how we can build communities that are more supportive of older adults and, by extension, more supportive of everybody else in the community,” he said, adding that the overall nationwide effort is being overseen by the advocacy group for older Americans, while the global initiative is being coordinated by the World Health Organization.
“It’s a program that targets long-term policy and system-level change that is divided into several phases, implemented over four or five years,” Elkhattaby Strauch continued. “The first phase is enrollment, in which towns that are part of this network submit an application that says we know our towns have every intention of being more supportive of older adults, and to include that intention in our policy and systems planning.”
That having been accomplished early in the process, he says the effort has now transitioned to the assessment phase.
“Right now, we’re just closing our survey but we’ll also be going to focus groups, talking to people in the community; to take that data that we gather from the community and create an age-friendly action plan that has some short-term, long-term, and medium-term goals, in order to start moving toward a community that’s not just responding to problems in the moment, but setting up a better life for older adults — both the physical environment and the social environment.”
The final phase, Elkhattaby Strauch explained, is implementation.
“We want to take some of the short-term actions and start implementing them, such as applying for grants. We have an advantage, especially in Massachusetts, because there are a lot of organizations funding healthy aging initiatives — certainly more than other parts of the country, and definitely much more than many parts of the world.
“When you go through this process, you hear from people in the community, create the plan, and then look at options for getting funding to implement some of these programs.”
Elkhattaby Strauch said AARP has identified what it refers to as the “eight domains of livability.” He described it as a framework developed to allow communities to determine how older residents live in their city or town.
“The physical environment domains include,” he continued, “housing, transportation, and outdoor/public spaces. The social environment domain includes things like social participation, communication and access to information, community and health services, respect for social inclusion. And there are other things as well; this is just sort of a framework for communities to understand.”
He said many of the communities in LifePath’s catchment area — including Athol and surrounding towns — expressed interest in developing age-friendly strategies for their residents. He said similar efforts have been taking place in Massachusetts for the past decade, with the first community to become involved in age-friendly initiatives — Brookline — starting its efforts in 2011.
“The issue here,” said Elkhattaby Strauch, “is that a lot of the towns are so small that the capacity issue makes it really hard. A lot of towns don’t have any staff working on senior services, or they have some volunteers, or maybe a part-timer or senior center director.”
Because of this reality, LifePath applied for a grant to provide assistance to communities in North Quabbin and Franklin County to generate age-friendly planning, including help with technical assistance and collaboration among communities. However, he said, while there are some issues that can best be dealt with on a collaborative basis, there are issues peculiar to each community that can only be addressed by that community. He added that 20 of the 30 towns in LifePath’s service area have joined the age-friendly effort.
Elkhattaby Strauch said that in addition to transportation, health care and nutrition, one issue in particular has come to the fore in recent years.
“Something that is really noteworthy in the last couple of years — in a big way, due to the impact of COVID — is a lot of peoples’ priority right now, more than transportation, has become social isolation. It has become the number one issue for a lot of folks because of things shutting down, because of the lack of socialization opportunities, and also — where opportunities do now exist — because people still have some fears about being out in the community. But definitely the mental health aspect of it is something we’re hearing much more often.”
Elkhattaby Strauch said there is no set timeline for developing and implementing age-friendly strategies in the region, adding that more than 1,700 people have responded to the survey. Most of the rest of this year, he said, would be spent analyzing the data gathered, while next year will be dedicated to creating an action plan for implementing the strategies developed.
Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com