Making a Community Age-Friendly

By Gil Klein

In downtown Alexandria, known as Old Town, pedestrians fill the sidewalks on pleasant days, walking past outdoor cafes and 18th-century buildings with shops and galleries. Joggers and bicyclists enjoy riverside pathways.

The city is often touted as a great place to live and work. But is that also true for its older residents?

That’s what longtime AARP volunteer Jane King wants to find out. She helped Alexandria become Virginia’s first member of the AARP Network of Age-Friendly Communities, and now she wants the city to live up to that designation.

Part of the task is just getting the word out. A member of the city’s Commission on Aging, King works to recruit volunteers in neighborhoods and diverse communities to inform residents about the services and programs available for older adults.

“I want to stress the importance of volunteers,” King said. “We can be advocates. We can stay highly focused to keep the city’s agencies and nonprofit organizations engaged so they don’t get lost to other priorities. We become the agents of change.”

King has lived in Alexandria for 30 years. A veteran political consultant, she worked for AARP several years ago as part of a group researching what makes a community more livable.

Now she is working with the city on steps to fulfill its age-friendly plan. A Complete Streets program, for example, aims to make sidewalks, intersections and pathways to buildings safer and more accessible.

“We will be doing some walkability audits, focusing on areas where there is a history of problems,” King said.

Involving volunteers
Other goals include more opportunities for older volunteers and increasing the supply of affordable assisted living in the city.

“Our mayor and city council are committed to making sure the needs of our older adults are met,” King said.

The second community in the state to achieve the age-friendly designation, Grayson County in southwest Virginia, has just launched its plan.

Retired nurse Sandy Troth, 70, of Summerfield, is a leader in the Grayson project. She said limited access to health care for older residents is a big issue. There are few doctors in a county with 15,000 residents.

“We are looking into the possibility of bringing a federally qualified health clinic to the county,” she said.

More than 165 communities, home to 64 million people, are in various stages of developing the Age-Friendly Communities concept. They range in size from Los Angeles County (10.1 million people) to Big Flats, N.Y. (7,767).

A major goal is to prepare local governments for the aging population by paying attention to the environmental, economic and social factors that influence the health and well-being of adults.

AARP launched the network ( aarp.org/agefriendly) in 2012 under the auspices of the World Health Organization’s Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities.

In Alexandria, King keeps a list of goals, including making sure that older immigrants are not excluded from programs because they don’t speak English.

“Considering that Alexandria is a good place to live, much still can be done to enhance the lives of older residents,” she said.

Gil Klein is a writer living in Arlington, Va.