Class 1

Age Friendly Communities  4/30/2018

The classes are held at the Medford IORA location, and are facilitated by Hannah Mason (IORA Intern), and Heather Carroll (IORA Behavioral Health Specialist).

The class is comprised of 9 seniors who reside in the following Massachusetts cities/towns:

• Arlington
• Malden
• Medford
• Revere
• Somerville

Each of us will be discussing how the community we live in measures up to be an Age Friendly Community. I will be reporting on Somerville MA, a city only 4.2 square miles in total area but with a population of around 82,000, it is the most densely populated municipality in New England according to the US Census Bureau.

Somerville has a medium age of 31.6 (2016 figures), and there are 10,289 Somerville seniors, which is around 12.5 % of the population.

In the first class, we discussed topics as:

• What services do our communities provide
• What services should be provided
• What is working in our communities
• What is not working or needs to be improved or what needs to be implemented in our communities.

The World Health Organization and AARP came up with 8 Domains (categories) for an Age friendly community. Click here for a listing of all the Age friendly Community Themes we came up with.