Research with the Village Movement
Engaging Villages as Key Partners
for Healthy Aging Research
This webpage has information about a national project that aimed to strengthen capacity among Villages and researchers to design research on optimizing Villages for healthy aging. It was developed as part of an engagement project led by the Rutgers Hub for Aging Collaboration, Village to Village Network, and RAND. The project began in August of 2023 and formally concluded in June of 2025. Join our mailing list to receive announcements about next-steps projects and to learn about future opportunities for Villages to become involved.
Background on Villages and the Engagement Project
Villages are “community-based, nonprofit, grassroots organizations formed through a cadre of caring neighbors who want to change the paradigm of aging” (Village to Village Network). As membership organizations, Villages are typically governed by community residents themselves and provide older adults with services, social connections, and other events. Areas addressed include transportation, nutrition, technology, home maintenance, friendly visiting, healthcare advocacy, and more. Villages facilitate this support largely through neighbors-helping-neighbors volunteer arrangements, with some supplemental support from paid staff and referrals to formal providers.
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This project was a critical step to connect Village stakeholders and researchers to design future healthy aging research for and with Village members. The project was especially oriented to the design of PCOR/CER, a specific type of research that involves comparing the relative effectiveness of interventions that promote health outcomes of greatest importance to the people participating in the research. For an official summary about the project, visit this page of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
Project Leadership Team
Our team was a collaboration among Villagers and researchers led in partnership by three organizations:​
For more information, visit Project Team.
This project was funded through a Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award (#EACB-26583). The statements presented on the website are solely the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute® (PCORI®), its Board of Governors or Methodology Committee.