Assessing environments to support healthy aging and reduce social isolation

Presenter: Emily Rugel, Postdoctoral fellow, Simon Fraser University

Description:

The population of adults aged 60-plus is growing rapidly around the world, expected to more than double to more than two billion by 2050, and the World Health Organization has declared 2020-2030 the “Decade of Healthy Ageing” in response to this demographic shift. Although much of the conversation around healthy aging has focused on individual risk factors and health behaviors, the built, natural, and social environments all play significant roles.

This free webinar hosted by the Healthy Built Environment Forum of Canada's National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health will describe indicators of age-friendly environments at the community level, particularly in low- and middle-income countries and in rural settings, as well presenting findings from an indicator-development effort within the global Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology study (PURE). In light of the increased vulnerability to COVID-19 at this stage of life and the additional restrictions on social interactions that have resulted, we’ll also discuss what is known about roles for community design in reducing social isolation and how these findings can be integrated into age-friendly policies and designs that maximize overall population-health benefits without exacerbating well-known health inequities.

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