Report: Age Friendly Colorado Springs

As a part of the Age Friendly Initiative which seeks to make Colorado Springs livable for people of all ages, the Innovations in Aging Collaborative (IIAC) is working to launch a web resource portal and smartphone application designed to educate citizens, particularly seniors and caregivers, on accessing the care and resources they need.

The Next 50 Initiative and the Innovations in Aging Collaborative partnered with Elevated Insights to conduct research among older residents and caregivers in El Paso County.

To effectively develop and market this portal, IIAC engaged Elevated Insights to survey the community, create baseline metrics of satisfaction and clarify areas of need for older residents.

Elevated Insights conducted focus groups to provide direction to the Age Friendly resource portal on how to best inform and communicate with seniors and caregivers.

Highlights from Executive Summary

• Providing an Age Friendly community for El Paso County’s aging population will require a holistic effort, as these age groups represent a broad range of life-stages, needs, and demands.

• For perspective, most of those 60-64 are still working, 65-74 residents tend to be fully living in retirement, and the 75+ age group is more likely to be living alone and is getting more dependent on support/ assistance.

• As the aging population shifts towards 85+ in coming years, city services and support will need to shift accordingly and should become another breakout for monitoring needs and satisfaction.

• Caregivers and their care recipients represent a different population than total older residents - recipients of care tend to reflect the most needy of older residents, and their needs/satisfaction should be reported separately.

• While including the 60-64 year old group is necessary for future planning, portal development, and media planning efforts, the Age Friendly Initiative may want to focus on 65+ residents for metrics, score-card, tracking, and population growth to standardize with other cities.

Innovations in Aging Collaborative

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