Year started: 2019

AgeFriendly.org is a data-driven technology platform that aims to provide trusted content about the aging journey, help validate and elevate all things “age-friendly”, and invite older adults and caregivers to share reviews and ratings about programs, businesses, health care providers and other services where they live, work and thrive. Experts have used the term “age-friendly” for the last 15 years to describe and assess successful approaches to improving quality outcomes for older adults in cities, workplace, homes and provider settings. Providers around the globe are innovating and creating “age-friendly” best practices to better serve fast growing populations of older adults. Consumers too are recognizing and adopting this term, fueled by consumer-facing media in the U.S. that has used the term over 300,000 times in just the last two years. A missing link in this burgeoning “age-friendly” ecosystem has been a feedback loop: the ability for providers to collect consumer feedback at scale and use it to guide the creation of better programs and services that truly live up to the promise of “age-friendly.” User-generated rating and reviews sites exist in many categories (like travel) to promote authenticity, create trust and drive purchasing decisions. To date, a comparable site that elevates and connects “age-friendly” providers with older adults has not existed. AgeFriendly.org aims to address this gap.

Objectives

AgeFriendly.org’s objectives are to fully harness the internet to: 1.) aggregate, curate and elevate all things “age-friendly,” 2.) create a consumer feedback loop that can inform continuous improvement from communities, sites of care, employers and other service providers and 3.) empower older adults in their aging journey. By pairing "top-down" systems across three core areas, Living, Health, and Jobs, with "bottom up" feedback from older adults themselves, AgeFriendly.org drives consumer understanding of, and demand for, age-friendly solutions. It also provides practice partners with user feedback data as a tool for continuous improvement.

Scope

AgeFriendly.org's target population is older adults and their family caregivers. AgeFriendly.org currently focuses on the United States of America, but is expected to expand internationally beginning in 2023.