Research in the United States to strengthen state involvement in age-friendly communities and broader systems change

Age-friendly community (AFC) initiatives are deliberate, cross-sectoral efforts to improve local communities for longer, healthier, and more engaged lives. Formalized by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the early 2000s, the AFC movement calls for public sector leaders to collaboratively work across departments, as well as with private organizations, civic groups, and residents (especially older adults), to engage in participatory planning and strategic actions to enhance environments and systems for aging across multiple domains of community life. Programmatic activities involve convening cross-sectoral advisory and working groups, conducting community assessments, developing local action plans, implementing activities toward planned objectives, and monitoring progress and evaluating outcomes and impact, with a focus on healthy aging and improving quality of life for people of all ages. In the United States, widespread efforts to launch and sustain AFC initiatives have historically been organized and resourced within the private sector, such as through the AARP National Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities (NNAFSC). Nevertheless, as the AFC movement continues to evolve, alongside the development of other related state policy innovations (e.g., State Multisector Plans for Aging [MPA], state involvement in age-friendly public health initiatives), there is growing state policy attention to support AFC initiatives and broader age-friendly systems change (Wickersham & Coyle, 2026). This paper describes how academic research partnerships are a key driver for spurring and strengthening state involvement in AFCs. We present case examples from three states. Each case showcases the roles of public university-based researchers to enhance the capacity of state policy leaders to advance age-friendly systems change at the local, regional, and statewide levels. We begin with a case example from California, whereby researchers from the University of California, Davis, partnered with state leaders on technical assistance and evaluation for a state grant program to promote AFC initiatives in underrepresented communities. Next, we present work from Massachusetts, where University of Massachusetts Boston researchers partnered with local governments on developing data-informed age-friendly community plans, which evolved into a growing partnership with the state. Finally, we present developments from New Jersey, in which researchers at Rutgers University worked with the nonprofit sector and other local leaders to conduct a developmental evaluation of a private philanthropic grantmaking program to spur AFC initiatives in New Jersey. This work evolved into leading a community of practice and building coalitions, which eventually helped catalyze the more recent emergence of state AFC involvement. In 2021, California launched its MPA, a 10-year, multisector blueprint to build a more equitable, age- and disability-friendly state. At the time, approximately 50 California jurisdictions were already enrolled in the AARP NNAFSC, and California formally joined the network as its eighth state member. Notably, the MPA and the accompanying Local MPA Playbook (CDA, n.d.a) positioned support for NNAFSC participation as a foundational element of the state’s age-friendly strategy, framing local action as essential infrastructure for achieving statewide goals while promoting regional solutions across a large and diverse state. However, stakeholders and the state recognized that NNAFSC membership was uneven, with underrepresentation from rural and historically under-resourced communities. The 2022–2023 budget included a one-time $4.5 million State General Fund appropriation for the California Department of Aging (CDA) to launch the Local Aging and Disability Action Planning (LADAP) Grant Program (CDA, n.d.b). In 2023, CDA awarded 21 grants to a mix of city and county governments, community-based organizations, and consortia, collectively representing 20 counties and 10 cities. Additionally, CDA contracted with the University of California (UC) Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing—Family Caregiving Institute to provide program evaluation and technical assistance, establishing a mechanism for continuous learning. The UC Davis team employed a developmental evaluation approach (Patton, 2010), using data collection as a tool for reflexive grantee support and program improvement. Through collaboration, UC Davis and CDA co-designed reporting templates and tailored methods to evolving needs. Technical assistance and support services were operationalized through a statewide learning infrastructure. Monthly “Office Hours” and bi-monthly “Learning Labs” fostered a community of practice where grantees could troubleshoot challenges (e.g., engaging monolingual communities, navigating county governance), exchange strategies, and learn from peers and experts. Concurrently, data from surveys, focus groups, interviews, grant applications, and progress reports were rapidly analyzed and translated into targeted supports to address emerging grantee needs. This support structure fostered a sense of connectedness among the grantees and accelerated the development of collective leadership and capacity across California’s diverse communities. Preliminary evaluation findings demonstrate LADAP’s systemic impact. Grantees established stronger local networks, broke down silos, and unified aging and disability advocates for coordinated planning for the first time. The LADAP grant program enabled deep, intentional engagement with residents across diverse languages, cultures, and abilities—many of whom had never previously been engaged by local government. Funding for translation, stipends, and culturally responsive outreach was crucial to build credibility and shift community skepticism to trust, promoting new civic engagement as residents began participating in local commissions and advisory councils. This intentional outreach, along with anti-ageism and anti-ableism training, increased public awareness and led local government leaders to adopt more inclusive language and practices. Engagement from local elected officials was substantive; many committed to supporting plan implementation and participated in town halls and plan reviews. This support translated into early action through new or expanded municipal policies (e.g., updating General Plans) and new or expanded programs such as caregiver training and transportation pilots. In their progress reports to CDA and UC Davis, as well as through interviews conducted by the UC Davis team, grantees shared that their involvement in LADAP strengthened facilitation and data analysis skills and helped their organizations realign their missions with community needs. Crucially, LADAP built a sustainable foundation. Grantees expressed high confidence in their initiatives’ sustainability through the identification of designated implementation leadership and complementary funding. The 25 resulting Local Plans (CDA, n.d.b) provide equity-centered roadmaps addressing 10 domains—from housing and transportation to caregiving and emergency preparedness—and are guided by eight cross-cutting strategies, including embedding equity, promoting civic participation, and fostering cross-sector collaboration. Beyond documenting local outcomes, UC Davis’s final evaluation report (CDA, n.d.b) synthesized the grantee experiences into recommendations, including encouraging CDA to continue convening local AFC leaders and formalizing feedback loops between local plans and the state MPA. A central insight was that while the local plans were aligned with the state MPA, mechanisms for local insights to inform the MPA require further strategic development and resourcing. This evaluation positions LADAP as a critical conduit to enhance this “bottom-up” learning, enabling iterative state policy refinement. While the LADAP grant program concluded in December 2025, UC Davis and CDA continue to partner on MPA implementation priorities, particularly related to caregiving. The California case exemplifies researchers as intentionally embedded strategic partners in policy implementation. By combining developmental evaluation with hands-on technical assistance, the UC Davis team extended state capacity, strengthened local skills, and fostered peer networks. This model of embedding academic researchers within state policy implementation accelerated learning, enhanced accountability, and strengthened the vital link between visionary state policy and equitable local action. This case example describes the role of the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB) in shaping Massachusetts’ Reimagining Aging 2030: The Massachusetts Plan (“the Plan”) (Executive Office of Aging & Independence, 2025) and the accompanying Executive Order embedding age-friendly principles across state executive offices (Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2023). The Massachusetts case illustrates how sustained, community-engaged research, stemming from local partnerships, can inform both the substantive priorities and governance structures of an age-friendly state. Through its Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging (CSDRA), UMB has partnered with more than 90 cities and towns across Massachusetts to design, implement, and evaluate age-friendly and dementia-friendly initiatives since 2012. Guided by the WHO’s eight domains of age-friendliness, UMB’s research emphasizes mixed-methods approaches that integrate population-based surveys, focus groups, key informant interviews, environmental scans, and administrative data analysis. These methods generate locally grounded evidence on housing, transportation, social participation, economic security, health and wellness, and civic engagement, while also enabling cross-community comparison and synthesis. Importantly, CSDRA’s work extends beyond assessment to include technical assistance, evaluation design, and feedback processes that support iterative local planning—features increasingly identified as critical to sustainable age-friendly systems (Fulmer et al., 2020). As the Massachusetts Executive Office of Aging & Independence (AGE) undertook development of its latest MPA, UMB researchers worked in close collaboration with state partners to aggregate and interpret findings from the extensive body of local age-friendly research. Rather than treating municipal initiatives as discrete examples, CSDRA advanced a research strategy that conceptualized local age-friendly efforts as embedded case studies of policy implementation. This approach aligns with implementation science perspectives emphasizing real-world settings as sources of transferable policy knowledge (Damschroder et al., 2009). Through this lens, the Plan was informed not only by demographic trends and national benchmarks, but also by evidence on how age-friendly principles are operationalized in diverse communities, where implementation barriers arise, and which governance structures support sustained action. Rather than treating municipal initiatives as discrete examples, CSDRA (the research team) advanced a research strategy that conceptualized local age-friendly efforts as embedded case studies of policy implementation. One key research contribution was identifying themes that consistently emerged across local age-friendly plans. These included persistent housing affordability challenges, transportation constraints limiting social participation, unmet caregiving needs, and widespread economic insecurity among older adults whose incomes exceed federal poverty thresholds but remain insufficient to meet basic living costs. UMB’s leadership on the Elder Economic Security Index (Elder Index, 2024) provided a critical analytic framework for these findings, demonstrating systematic gaps between official poverty measures and the actual cost of aging in place. This research directly informed the Plan’s emphasis on economic security as a foundational determinant of health, independence, and community engagement, reinforcing calls within the age-friendly literature to address structural and upstream drivers of inequity (Scharlach & Lehning, 2015). CSDRA is also contributing to the monitoring and evaluation orientation of the Plan. Drawing both on the Massachusetts Healthy Aging Data (Massachusetts Healthy Aging Collaborative, n.d.) as a base upon which to consider indicators of impact, as well as CSDRA’s experience with evaluating municipal age-friendly action plans, researchers emphasized the importance of measurable outcomes, resident-centered indicators, and continuous learning mechanisms. Rather than positioning the Plan as a static policy document, UMB is collaborating with AGE in conceptualizing an adaptive framework, capable of evolving in response to emerging data and local feedback. This emphasis on iterative learning responds to critiques that age-friendly initiatives often lack accountability and longitudinal evaluation (Menec et al., 2015). Perhaps most significantly, UMB’s research informed the governance logic underlying the Executive Order accompanying the Plan (Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2023). Drawing on a review of global examples, CSDRA documented that the most effective age-friendly efforts embedded aging considerations across multiple departments—such as planning, public works, transportation, housing, and public health—rather than confining responsibility to local senior centers. These findings provided a rationale for extending age-friendly principles beyond programmatic aging services to the full scope of state governance. Working with AGE, CSDRA researchers helped articulate how age-friendly commitments could be embedded across executive offices, aligning Massachusetts’ approach with WHO’s call for “aging in all policies” frameworks (WHO, 2015). By mandating cross-agency alignment and shared accountability, the resulting Executive Order operationalizes age-friendly principles as a structural feature of state policy-making rather than a discretionary initiative (Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2023). In doing so, Massachusetts advances the emerging US model of an age-friendly state—one grounded in empirical evidence, cross-sector coordination, and sustained academic–government partnership. Collectively, CSDRA’s work demonstrates a research-to-policy pathway for advancing age-friendly states. By systematically aggregating local evidence, centering older adults’ lived experiences, and applying implementation science to community planning, UMB contributed to a state plan and Executive Order that are both empirically grounded and operationally robust. This case illustrates how long-term, community-engaged research infrastructures can inform durable, systems-level policy change. AFC efforts in New Jersey initially launched and expanded as the result of grassroots and private sector efforts, with early champions in nonprofit organizations and private philanthropy. In 2014, with leadership from a local community-based organization on aging, Princeton was the first municipality in NJ to join the AARP NNAFSC. Soon thereafter, Montclair, NJ, started an AFC initiative with support from a regional philanthropic grantmaker, funding a dedicated coordinator within the municipality to lead this pioneering work. These developments inspired two additional private philanthropies in NJ—The Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation and The Grotta Fund for Older Adults—to create a collaborative grantmaking program to spur AFC initiatives in their own geographic catchment areas. Beginning in 2015 and extending through 2024, municipalities within several northern counties received successive grants to launch and develop AFC initiatives and, in some cases, to expand through more regional AFC efforts. Initial grantees were mainly nonprofit and grassroots leaders; subsequent grantees included additional municipal leads. From the start of the grantmaking program, researchers at the Rutgers University School of Social Work partnered on technical assistance and evaluation. Initially, they identified their role as developmental evaluators, collaborating with philanthropic and community leaders to study the initiatives’ development from the outset and to translate insights from this knowledge development in real time to support the initiatives and amplify their impact. This knowledge translation took place through activities such as co-designing technical assistance sessions with the grantmakers and grantees, providing one-on-one coaching and consultation to the grantees as requested, and creating and leveraging opportunities to raise awareness to broader networks of constituents on the innovative work of the AFC leaders and the grants program. Over the years, this interplay between the development and translation of shared knowledge coalesced into a programmatic structure, now called Age-Friendly New Jersey (AFNJ, 2025). To this day, AFNJ operates as a network whereby the researchers, grantmakers, as well as AFC leaders and partners communicate and connect through multiple platforms for shared learning toward greater AFC impact and sustainability. AFNJ also serves as a coalition for advocacy to promote AFC progress at broader systems levels, including the state. Through 2023, Rutgers served as the “backbone” organization for the alliance, designing platforms and processes for broader and deeper connections, as well as collective action, among AFC leaders. Examples of network outputs that the researchers led in creating were regular learning sessions, statewide conference content, advocacy and outreach messaging to state officials, and digital tools such as a standalone website, newsletter, listserv, digital resource directory, and e-marketing database. These developments, in part, inspired state leaders—specifically within the Division of Aging Services, NJ Department of Human Services (NJDHS)—to enact strategies to expand AFC initiatives statewide. In 2021, the governor passed an executive order for NJ to join the AARP NNAFSC (State of New Jersey, 2021). This order also called for a statewide Advisory Council to identify priorities and strategies for AFC The work led to the development and of the New Jersey Age-Friendly for public and private sector to advance AFC progress across housing, health, transportation, and in 2024, a for for its Age-Friendly funding and technical assistance for AFC assessments, engagement, and aligned with the To this day, Rutgers a partner to the state on its AFC work. In to participation on the Age-Friendly State Advisory Council its approximately of the researchers as the on the Age-Friendly as well as contracted of statewide technical As an example of their they an early report the grants program in of & with the start of a in This report to enhance among key stakeholders the grants program and its impact, as well as how the program is of a of state involvement in AFC efforts. and awareness of in NJ is that the grants program on federal funding from the to sustain and expand the program. These statewide evaluation and reporting are further a broader advocacy for the new governor to the development of a NJ by a broader statewide coalition New Jersey, including of the AFNJ and the Rutgers In the of AFC work in NJ, the state’s recent demonstrates the role of researchers in leading cross-sectoral networks to catalyze state leadership for AFC change. This case the of leveraging the of for continuous knowledge translation, and as well as toward As a policy of the that historically has on local government and has been by the private sector in the United States (e.g., private and nonprofit as the movement and there is growing state policy action to support and broader age-friendly systems change. The case examples collectively demonstrate the importance of public university-based research partnerships to spur these they the of academic involvement not only to data and but to and social of government and age-friendly systems change. the several key roles of researchers in these Research for and community-engaged research, including developmental toward broader social change (e.g., strengthening of and collaborative all of rapidly emerging insights into responsive and technical assistance to address practice opportunities and Age-Friendly and platforms for shared learning across age-friendly and champions and advocates across and systems (e.g., creating systems for and convening AFC leaders across for peer Local and State and learning between state and local (e.g., insights on challenges, and innovations across state policy priorities on local trends and an Age-Friendly & 2025) by across age-friendly developments time and (e.g., framing local AFC initiatives as essential to all state collaborating across and on AFC conceptualizing one-time programs as of a of work on they (the the of involvement not only to data and but to and social of government and age-friendly systems change. Collectively, the academic researchers as strategic partners to state policy working alongside local governments, and to advance age-friendly social change. The demonstrate how these partnerships develop extended and researchers in including as technical strategic and This model of and partnership with a of researchers as a or conducting policy evaluation. all three are on with large governments working in partnership with public research While research (e.g., other nonprofit organizations, private the public sector public research for with state governments on age-friendly systems change. public have a greater emphasis on public and civic engagement to private more have been as a as effective platforms for cross-sector collaboration with to address social is to the of insights from these in other (e.g., private research both within and of and in other to continue to advance transferable knowledge development on research partnerships within policy actions for age-friendly This work received in part, from the California Department of Aging The and for their feedback on of this work.