Age–Friendly Cities Features From the Elderly’S Perspectives Underscoring “Community Support and Health Services”

Background: the 21st century is characterized by two challenges; 1) urbanized population, 2) ageing population. in this regard, the iranian old population ages over 60 years is expected to grow rapidly. improving the elderly's quality of life is one of the challenges for policymakers and achieving this goal is accessible by designing accurate plans. in this way, who has initiated a global project to define “age- friendly cities.” this study aims to evaluate the criteria of age– friendly cities from the elderly’s perspectives. methods: this cross-sectional study employed interview technique on 400 older adults selected by stratified sampling method. the samples attended four community health centers. demographic information of participants was collected and the abbreviated mental test, along with age-friendly cities checklist were administered, too. data was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics using spss 20 (p<0.05). results: in this study, 53% of participants were female and 47% were male. the majority of participants (56.8%) were in the age range of 60-70 years. most participants (59.8%) passed elementary and high school. the mean score of “community support and health services,” from participants' perspectives was 26.82, which was lower than the mean score of the tool (42). the variables of housekeeping and the average of outdoor spending time (1-3 h) had the highest relationship with the elderly’s perspectives on “community support and treatment-health services.” conclusion: based on the results, welfare-cultural planning according to the older adults' perspectives and a creative collaboration among health policymakers and other organizations involved in ageing issues must be emphasized to empower the criteria of age-friendly cities.