Aging Ready Communities - Challenges, Opportunities, National and Local Models - November 30, 2011

Photo: Philip Stafford, interviews James L. Lisher, Chair of Health and Human Service Commission of New Canaan; and Frances T. "Bitsie" Clark - Executive Director, East Rock Village, serving residents from New Haven, Hamden and North Haven.

Aging in place experts, Philip B. Stafford, Ph.D., Director of the Center on Aging and Community at Indiana Institute on Disability and Community at Indiana University, and Mia Oberlink, M.A., Project Director, Community Innovations for Aging in Place Initiative TAG Team and Senior Research Associate for the Center for Home Care Policy and Research, Visiting Nurse Services of New York, shared their insight and knowledge about the positive influences, productive potential and healthy benefits of aging-ready communities.

Representatives from grantmaking organizations, nonprofit providers, state and community agencies, and experts from colleges and universities, engaged in a lively Q&A session and conversation about aspects of livable, inclusive communities, the positive benefits of older adults aging in their communities, the critical relationships among mobility, housing and land use decision making, and the need to “raise the volume” on the relationship between older individuals and their surrounding environment.

James L. Lisher, Chair of Health and Human Service Commission of New Canaan and Frances T. "Bitsie" Clark, Executive Director, East Rock Village (New Haven) presented information about communities that are serving or addressing issues that will assist residents to "age in place," and providing supports that help older adults remain self sufficient.