Age-friendly communities with a strategy & action plan
Data type:
Proportion
Topic:
Ageing
Rationale:
Developing a strategy and action plan is a critical step in advancing age-friendly community initiatives. It demonstrates a community’s commitment to addressing the needs of older people through a structured and coordinated approach. A documented plan helps translate the findings of baseline assessments into concrete priorities and actions, supports coordination across sectors, and enables communities to allocate resources and monitor progress. Tracking the development of such plans helps policymakers and stakeholders understand the extent to which communities are preparing to respond to population ageing and implement age-friendly initiatives.
Definition:
A strategy and action plan for an age-friendly community is a documented framework that outlines priorities, goals, and actions to improve environments and services for older people. The strategy identifies key areas for improvement and establishes objectives to support healthy ageing and enable older persons to participate fully in community life. The accompanying action plan specifies concrete actions, timelines, responsible stakeholders, and resources required to implement the strategy. These plans typically address domains relevant to age-friendly environments such as accessible infrastructure, transportation, housing, health and social services, social participation, communication and information, safety, and community engagement.
Disaggregation:
Country, Cities, Towns or Rural areas
Method of measurement
This indicator is calculated by identifying all cities, towns, or rural areas within a country that are formally committed to becoming age-friendly communities, including those participating in the WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities or equivalent national programmes. Among these communities, the number that have developed a documented strategy and action plan during their current age-friendly implementation cycle is identified. A strategy and action plan refers to an official document that outlines objectives, priority actions, timelines, and responsible stakeholders to improve age-friendly environments and services. The indicator is calculated as the percentage of participating communities that have developed such a plan out of the total number of communities working to become age-friendly.
Other possible data sources:
None recommended
Preferred data sources:
WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities (GNAFCC) portal
This indicator measures whether a strategy and action plan exists but does not assess its quality, scope, or level of implementation. The presence of a documented plan does not necessarily ensure that actions are implemented, adequately resourced, or monitored over time. In addition, strategies and action plans may vary substantially in their content, level of detail, stakeholder engagement, and alignment with age-friendly principles. These differences may limit comparability across communities and countries.
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