Age–Friendly Cities Features From the Elderly’s Perspectives Underscoring “Community Support and Health Services”

Background: The 21st century is faced with increase in challenges of urban population and aging. According to statistics, the old population in the world and in Iran is increasing. Obviously, their health promotion is the concern of the community and achieving it requires purposeful planning. Being healthy means to feel good in social, mental, and physical dimensions (definition by the World Health Organization). Recently special attention has been paid to the health and quality of life of old people. In this regard, the concept of &ldquo;age-friendly city&rdquo; with its 8 components has been raised. This study aimed to evaluate age-friendly city from the perspective of the old people with the emphasis on the component of &ldquo;supports of the community and healthcare services.&rdquo; Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study. A total of 400 old people who had the study inclusion criteria have been selected among referrals to 4 healthcare centers in Tehran, by stratified sampling and proportional allocation method. Study Instruments were short cognitive test, demographic characteristics, and checklist of evaluating age-friendly city. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics by SPSS 20. The significance level was set at less than 0.05(P<0.05). Results: In this study, 53% of the samples were women and 47% were men. The majority of subjects (56.8%) were in the age group of 60 to 70 years and most of them (59.9%) had under-diploma degree. Generally, the mean scores of the component of &ldquo;supports of the community and healthcare services&rdquo; was 82.26, which was less than the median score of the component. Housewives compared to the retired (reference group) has made the old people&rsquo;s attitudes score towards the component of &ldquo;neighborhood supports and healthcare services&rdquo; to increase to 0.26 and the mean time spending outdoors (1 to 3 h) compared to the reference group (less than 1 h) has made the old people&rsquo;s attitudes score towards the same component to reduce to -0.13.&nbsp; Conclusion: In line with the holistic nursing care, paying attention to the social dimension of the old people health, also considering the low mean score of the studied components, the need for culturalwell-being planning is felt. This planning must be based on old people&rsquo;s attitudes and in line with strengthening the components of age-friendly city. It also requires coordination among the health authorities, urban authorities, representatives of the old people (including associations and retirement centers, etc.) and experts in Gerontology.