Creating an Age-Friendly Community

A year in the making, this report, commissioned by the Department of Citizen Services of Howard County, Maryland, and published in December 2015, sets forth a vision for how the county can become an age-friendly community that supports good health and happiness for its older residents and their families. It is entitled: Planning for the Growth of the Older Adult Population in Howard County: Creating an Age-Friendly Community.

To create the report, KGRW assembled a team that included a futurist, a pollster, specialists in healthcare and community service, its own architects and master planners, a marketing firm and more, all under the leadership of our own Kevin Glover and the Department of Citizen Services. This team examined the state of services for older adults in Howard County today and envisioned a “preferred future” as agreed upon by the scores of Howard County community and business leaders and residents who participated in the project.

The reason for the report? Howard County realized that the population of U.S. adults aged 65 and older is set to double by the year 2020. They want to be prepared. And so they asked KGRW to review the county’s existing services and facilities for the aging and to envision how they can be improved in the years ahead. This is, of course, a challenge faced by jurisdictions across the nation.

We are particularly proud of this work. It expresses our firm’s deep knowledge of and commitment to building vibrant, engaging and supportive communities for older adults, along with our ability to assemble teams with the breadth and tenacity to tackle the pressing challenges of serving older adults well.

To download a copy of the report and its various appendices, please click here. If you would like to talk with us about how we can help your community prepare for the future, please send us a message.

December 2015