Age-friendly Environments

Connecting people, policy, and place to create age-friendly futures.

What Does Age-Friendly Environments Mean?

Age-friendly environments are a cornerstone of healthy ageing. They support functional ability, independence, dignity, and social and economic participation across the life course. Age-friendly cities and communities promote active ageing by removing physical and social barriers and enabling people of all ages to remain independent, engaged, and included. Age-friendly environments are designed to be adaptive and inclusive, ensuring their structures and services increase accessibility for all people within a community, regardless of needs and capacities.

How Does the IFA Advance Age-Friendly Environments?

IFA’s work in age-friendly environments ensures that population ageing and demographic change are centred within urban development, housing, transport, social policy, and community planning agendas. The IFA, as a non-State actor in official relations with WHO, also provides direct support as an Affiliate and member of the WHO Secretariat of the Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities. IFA in collaboration with the WHO has developed several age-friendly initiatives that offer support, education, and capacity building to leaders and advocates of the age-friendly framework. These initiatives include the Age-Friendly Communities Summit, Age-friendly Educational Webinar Series, the Mentor AFE Programme, and the multi-cycle Age-Friendly Environments (AFE) ECHO Programme.

IFA serves as a global connector, embedding age-friendly environments within broader healthy ageing, health systems, long-term care, sensory and brain health, climate resilience, and social development agendas. As a growing number of movements are reshaping how societies respond to ageing, including age-friendly cities, longevity cities, healthy ageing initiatives, university networks, and more, the IFA plays a key role in connecting and aligning these efforts globally, fostering collaboration and strengthening alignment to advance the impact of longevity and healthy ageing agendas.