1. How ‘age-friendly’ are rural communities and what community characteristics are related to age-friendliness? The case of rural Manitoba, Canada.
- Author
-
MENEC, VERENA H., HUTTON, LOUISE, NEWALL, NANCY, NOWICKI, SCOTT, SPINA, JOHN, and VESELYUK, DAWN
- Subjects
- *
ELDER care , *ANALYSIS of variance , *COMMUNITIES , *STATISTICAL correlation , *ECOLOGY , *PROBABILITY theory , *REGRESSION analysis , *RESEARCH funding , *RURAL conditions , *STATISTICS , *SURVEYS , *DATA analysis , *DATA analysis software , *DESCRIPTIVE statistics , *ATTITUDES toward aging - Abstract
Since the World Health Organization introduced the concept of ‘age-friendly’ communities in 2006, there has been rapidly growing interest in making communities more age-friendly on the part of policy makers world-wide. There is a paucity of research to date, however, that has examined age-friendliness in diverse communities, particularly in rural communities. The main objective of the study reported in this paper was to examine whether age-friendliness varies across community characteristics, such as a population size. The study was based on surveys administered in 56 communities throughout Manitoba, a mid-Western Canadian province, in the context of a needs assessment process for communities that are part of the Age-Friendly Manitoba Initiative. A total of 1,373 individuals completed a survey developed to measure age-friendliness. Domains included the physical environment; housing options; the social environment; opportunities for participation; community supports and health-care services; transportation options; and communication and information. Community characteristics were derived from census data. Multi-level regression analysis indicated that the higher the percentage of residents aged 65 or older, the higher the ratings of age-friendliness overall and, specifically, ratings of the social environment, opportunities for participation, and communication and information. Moreover, small communities located within a census metropolitan area and remote communities in the far north of the province emerged as having the lowest age-friendliness ratings. These findings suggest that communities are generally responsive to the needs of their older residents. That different results were obtained for the various age-friendly domains underscores the importance of considering age-friendliness in a holistic way and measuring it in terms of a range of community features. Our study further highlights the importance of differentiating between degrees of rurality, as different patterns emerged for communities of different sizes and proximity to a larger urban centre. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF