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Nearly 20 Communities Awarded Complete Streets Funding

News and Updates, Programs,

Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito joined Transportation Secretary and CEO Stephanie Pollack, Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver, and local officials in Springfield to announce funding awards totaling $5.1 million to eighteen communities through the Complete Streets Funding Program to support local, multimodal infrastructure projects that improve accessibility for people walking, biking, taking transit, and using other forms of transportation.

The Complete Streets program is also an opportunity for Age- and Dementia Friendly Communities looking for funding support to improve the physical environment of their city or town. For those communities interested in becoming more Age- and Dementia Friendly that are receiving an award, this funding could be a good kick-start to a local initiative and help bring stakeholder together. Continue reading →

Reframing Aging Training Announced by Tufts Health Plan Foundation

News and Updates, Programs

Are you a policymaker, aging advocate, nonprofit leader or other professional working on issues and programs important to older people? Find it challenging to make your case?

Join the Tufts Health Plan Foundation for a free webinar to learn how reframing your messages can advance your work and help you communicate more effectively. Continue reading →

New Bedford Chosen for NCOA Nutrition Assistance Program

News and Updates, Programs,

New Bedford is helping to lead the way for Age- and Dementia Friendly Community efforts in Massachusetts and will soon be benefiting from a partnership between the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and Health eVillages, a non-profit organization that provides free, state-of-the-art medical mobile technology to underserved areas.

This collaboration will help reduce food insecurity by enabling local volunteers in nine states to conduct home visits and outreach events using mobile tablets for SNAP eligibility assessments and applications. Continue reading →

ISHI Announces Inquiry of Ideas to Improve Housing Policies and Systems

News and Updates, Programs

The Innovative Stable Housing Initiative (ISHI) requests ideas from the Boston community (including individual or groups of residents, coalitions, or organizations) regarding what housing policies and systems should be changed and how. This Inquiry of Ideas (IOI) opportunity is the first step in designing a grantmaking process that is responsive to the needs of the community. Continue reading →

MassTrails Grants Awarded to 71 Projects Across Mass.

News and Updates, Programs, ,

Continuing efforts to support the state’s vast network of trails, the Baker-Polito Administration  announced $5 million in MassTrails Grants to 71 projects throughout the Commonwealth. The grants will provide assistance for the construction, maintenance, and improvements for a variety of public trails throughout the state trails system, such as hiking trails, bikeways, and shared-use paths. The announcement was made by Lieutenant Governor Polito during an event in Lowell. Continue reading →

Honoring Choices MA Supports Age- and Dementia Friendly Communities

News and Updates, Programs, ,

More than 1,000 Honoring Choices partners and Health Care Planning Ambassadors are working in their local communities to help adults make a personal health care plan and get connected to essential care to improve healthy living.

Honoring Choices is now connecting this important work to Age- And Dementia Friendly Community efforts across Massachusetts via a new web page using Framingham as an example.

Continue reading →

AARP Wins Award for Video Celebrating Men as Family Caregivers

Programs, Stories from the Field

AARP recently won a prominent “Sharecare Award” for its video spotlighting men as family caregivers, raising attention to an often hidden but vitally important group of people.

Co-produced with AARP Studios, the 3-minute video offers an inside look at a gathering of African-American men from Philadelphia who support one another and openly share their unique challenges. Continue reading →

Training the Aging Network to Provide Culturally Competent Care for LGBTQ Older Adults

News and Updates, Programs

The following background and issue brief from the Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation promotes cultural competency training for aging service providers on the unique needs of LGBTQ older adults.

Though the world has gotten more tolerant toward people who identify as LGBTQ, significant fear and barriers still exist in the health system, particularly for LGBTQ older adults. When you couple this fear with providers ill-equipped to handle the unique needs of LGBTQ older adults, you have a health system that allows these consumers to fall through the cracks.

To help address some of these barriers, the Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation has put together a new issue brief, authored by staff members at SAGE, about the importance of training aging service providers on the unique needs of LGBTQ older adults and on meeting those needs in a culturally competent manner. This brief describes SAGE’s cultural competency training program and shares a case study of how this training helped one large provider organization, Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY).

The Center also produced a video in collaboration with SAGE in 2017, “The Main Thing: Respect,” which includes older adults in this population sharing their perspectives on this topic.

Read the Brief here.

Continue reading →