The Global Age-Friendly Community Movement

Knowledgeably compiled and deftly edited by Philip B. Stafford [this volume] is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended as a core addition to community, college, and university library Gerontology Social Sciences and in Public Policy collections, as well as Social Services & Welfare supplemental curriculum studies lists. * Midwest Book Review [this volume] provides an excellent critical appraisal of the challenges, successes, theoretical models and their practical applicability in the building of age-friendly communities. Importantly, this volume suggests that the Age-Friendly Movement must consider the needs of populations at large, or risks further segmentation and isolation of various age-groups...The authors invite us to move away from the individual and the local as the smallest unit of health, to take into account the complex social conditions affecting a globalized world. * Anthropology & Aging In short, the strength of this book is that it reinforces and extends the current discussion of key, age-friendly issues, and brings attention to a new array of communities and their distinctive efforts. This book would be of interest to students, researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and community leaders who want to broaden their view of developments in the movement to develop age-friendly communities. The loud message gained from this book is that assessing the needs of aging populations and designing age-friendly community responses require vastly different approaches and tools, depending on the community. At the same time, the book makes clear that such efforts are possible and that much can be learned from the experiences of these communities. * The Gerontologist An important contribution to the literature... [it] attempts to broaden the theories of gerontology to consider the role of community and overcome the limitations of a purely medical model of aging. * Laura M. Keyes, University of North Texas