Creating an Age-Friendly Environment Across the Ecosystem

Imagine a world for older adults and their families where there is seamless communication across communities, public health systems, universities, and health systems and where there is continuity in the meaning of “age-friendly.” There is also a shared set of measures that can serve to capture meaningful data for handoffs that make all of our communication and outcomes stronger. Age-friendly ecosystems are plausible and important. The older adult population is growing rapidly and creating new opportunities for us to learn about how to envision societies that are responsive, healthful, equitable, engaging, active, and respectful in all endeavors. The purpose of this chapter is to describe approaches to creating and advancing an age-friendly ecosystem and the benefits of shared language and metrics that can be applied globally. Longevity is an asset that can transform our way of thinking about the greater context of our approaches to capitalizing on the resources generated by the successes of the governmental policies, education, health, and public health system advances of the twentieth century.