The End? It’s Just the Beginning!

...A new website

…Coast-to-coast meetings with Village leaders twice a month

…A series of virtual summits engaging over 400 people

…Pages of insights based on hours of focus groups and Zoom discussion rooms

…Spreadsheets of pre-/post-evaluation data

It has been quite the journey for the “Engaging Villages as Key Partners in Healthy Aging Research” project. This endeavor was launched in August of 2023 in partnership among the Rutgers Hub for Aging Collaboration, Village to Village Network, and RAND. Thank you to the hundreds of Village leaders and participants for contributing their time, talents, and energies to plan for healthy aging research with Villages. 

Through this project, we have:

• Gathered insights on how Village participants understand healthy aging outcomes;

• Identified promising directions for the design of healthy aging outcomes research with Villages;

• Spurred national dialogue and motivation among Village leaders for future comparative effectiveness research; and 

• Identified areas for continued capacity development toward future research with and among Villages.

The conclusion of this project is bittersweet. We are very proud and energized by our two-year project together, and we are grateful for the collaborations and connections we have made along the way. 

Even as the project was officially completed last month, there are several other new beginnings we are excited to share.

• First, we anticipate the final publication this summer of two reports with high-level insights from this project. One report was recently published in The Gerontologist. Check it out by clicking here. To review prior project reports, click here. These publications are available open access and demonstrate the insights we can create together!

• Another new beginning and accomplishment stemming from our project is the relaunch of the Village to Village Network (VtVN) Data & Evaluation (D&E) Committee. This relaunch was inspired by the Villages Healthy Aging Research Ambassadors Group, which was developed and implemented as part of the “Engaging Villages” project. Many former Ambassadors remain engaged through the VtVN Data and Evaluation Committee and are joined by leaders of regional networks of Villages. The D&E Committee is charged with exploring innovative and critical ways that data interface with Village operations, impact, and sustainability. The committee is now elevated within VtVN’s organizational structure and co-chaired by Dr. Emily Greenfield, Professor and Director of the Rutgers Hub for Aging Collaboration, and Dr. William Kincaid, VtVN Board President.

• The D&E Committee is already hard at work. Committee members have been meeting over the past several months to collaboratively design and plan the next nationwide project with Villages: The 2025 National Villages Survey. This project will officially launch in August, providing all operational Villages an exciting opportunity to share about their work and co-create refreshed understanding of the Village Movement’s grassroots efforts. Click here to read more, including information about the Survey Launch Party and Information Session to take place by Zoom on Tuesday, August 5, at 2PM ET/11AM PT. 

We look forward to staying in touch and continuing to use collaborative research and evaluation to advance the Village Movement together! 

For more information about research with Villages, visit https://www.villagesresearch.org/.