Europe enabling Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments

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According to World Health Organization (WHO) "making cities and communities age-friendly is one of the most effective local policy approaches for responding to demographic change”. However, regional initiatives still lack alignment between absolutely complementary policy areas such as health, social affairs, territorial sustainable development, employment and wellbeing. This silo approach restrains the creation, availability and large-scale adoption of age-friendly solutions across Europe. Known is also the gap between technological developments and end-users real needs and expectations. Therefore, policy alignment, collaborative efforts and sharing of good practices will be keystones to add better quality of life, more inclusive and sustainable health and social care systems and citizen’s access to the services. The EU_SHAFE project will improve policies and practices in 7 European regions by developing a comprehensive approach to Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE). Through a 'learning by sharing' methodology, this robust multi-disciplinary and intersectoral consortium will build a four-helix European community to exchange experiences and practices to improve multilevel policy instruments. The consortium will create a cooperative, inclusive ecosystem between public authorities, European networks and user’s associations, embedding their experience and skills with research & design knowledge from academia and SMEs for the growth of community-based services and “ageing at home” around Europe. • EU_SHAFE will Invest in policy design and adaptation of regional instruments derived from ETCF (R&I priorities) and ESF (Social Inclusion), through the creation of a large Euro-local network of stakeholders that will work together in ecosystems towards a common model – a White Paper on SHAFE. • Select and re-design concrete and scalable interventions in the area of social innovation for SHAFE, that may be implemented as realistic innovative models for the future.

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