The Villages as Key Partners for Healthy Aging Research project hosted a series of six virtual summits in June and July of 2024. Approximately 400 people from across the United States and other countries attended the summits. The summits spurred national dialogue among Village leaders, participants, and partners on the future of collaborative research to examine the benefits of Villages for healthy aging. The summits were collaboratively organized by the project team in collaboration with the Villages Healthy Aging Research Ambassadors group. Summit content also built from findings of focus groups held with Villages in the fall prior.
As part of a larger project with support from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute(TM), the summits focused, in part, on opportunities for patient-/person-centered outcomes research, as well as comparative effectiveness research designs. (Click here for a prior blog post to learn more about these terms in the context of Villages.)
Recordings from the summits are now available through a digital archive at www.villagesresearch.org/virtual-summits. The main recording features material from the Multi-Region Virtual Summit that was similar across all six summits, including:
Welcoming remarks
An overview of the project
A presentation on Villages and healthy aging by researchers at RAND
A presentation on Villages and research partnerships by project leaders from the Rutgers School of Social Work Hub for Aging Collaboration
Concluding remarks from leaders of Village to Village Network
The recorded materials also include commentary segments from members of the Villages Healthy Aging Research Ambassadors group and other invited guests. In these clips, Village leaders speak in their own voices on priorities for future healthy aging research with Villages, why outcomes research matters for the movement, key challenges and opportunities for cultivating research partnerships, and more.
The summits also facilitated live participation among the virtual attendees, including Zoom polls, breakout room discussions, and a post-event survey. Rutgers researchers are in the process of analyzing these data to offer additional insights and recommendations for future projects and partnerships. A report from the summits will become available in early 2025. Emily Greenfield, PhD, Professor of Social Work at Rutgers University and Project Lead said:
“We are learning so much by listening carefully to the voices of on-the-ground Village leaders about the community- and person-centered ways that Villages promote healthy aging. These insights will clarify the multiple pieces to work on together for collaborative research that can amplify the impact of Villages for healthy aging, aging in community, and age-friendly communities more broadly.”
Dr. Greenfield will report on preliminary findings from the summits through a presentation at the 2024 national gathering of the Village to Village Network, alongside other updates from Dr. William Kincaid, Village to Village Network Board President, and a member of the Healthy Aging Research Ambassadors group. Their presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, September 25, at 2:30 PM ET. For more information and to register for the virtual gathering, click here. Dr. William Kincaid reflected:
"In the past 15 years, the Village to Village Network has focused on expanding and supporting Villages. With the help of our partners at Rutgers and RAND, we are now beginning the hard work of measuring outcomes. This pivot from growing Villages to understanding the impact Villages have on individual members is an important one for the Village Movement.”
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