Population aging is a worldwide phenomenon. As a response, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the concept of 'age-friendliness' in 2006. Age-friendliness is defined in terms of a range of domains, such as housing, opportunities for participation, and transportation. Communities that accommodate the needs of older adults in these domains will, it is thought, promote healthy, active aging. The purpose of the present study was to examine communities' age-friendliness and its relationship to health-related outcomes in a rural context.
The study included 29 communities located in Manitoba, a mid-Western Canadian province, that are part of the Province of Manitoba's Age-Friendly Manitoba Initiative. As part of a needs assessment process in these communities, 593 individuals, including seniors and younger adults, completed an Age-Friendly Survey. The survey was designed to measure a variety of features in seven domains (the physical environment, housing options, the social environment, opportunities for participation, community supports and healthcare services, transportation options, and communication and information), as well as containing measures of life satisfaction and self-perceived health. Community characteristics were derived from census data. Moreover, communities were categorized on a rural-urban continuum.
Multi-level regressions indicated that an overall Age-Friendly Index was positively related to both life satisfaction (b=0.019, p