The 2018- 2023 Age-Friendly DC Strategic Plan is organized into three pillars. Within the three pillars, areas of focus or domains, recommended by the World Health Organization, were adopted to organize work. In 2017, DC residents shared their observations on life in the District, resulting in six additional domains that Age-Friendly DC uses to address their concerns about the city they love. Those DC-specific domains are marked with an asterisk (*) in the image below.

In January 2023, Age-Friendly DC began to assess the effectiveness and reach of the 2018-2023 strategic plan with an evaluation.

• Our Evaluation Aims
  • To evaluate progress implementing the 2018 to 2023 Age-Friendly DC strategic plan
  • To explore current barriers to healthy aging in DC that will inform the 2024 to 2028 strategic plan

• Our Questions
  1. Domain-by-domain, how have measures of interventions progressed?
  2. What are current attitudes to growing older within the District of Columbia?
  3. Do residents perceive progress across the strategic plan over the past 5 years?
  4. What are current barriers to healthy aging in DC?

• Our Evaluation Design
  • This evaluation utilized a mixed methods design consisting of three components: (1) Age-Friendly DC Task Force members for each domain were asked to report data on the completion of the plan aims, goals, and strategies (2) The DC Livability Survey was distributed by the Mayor’s Offices of Community Relations and Community Affairs at events across the city, in all 26 DC libraries, and published in The Beacon Newspapers (3) Focus groups were conducted with approximately 6-12 members per group to understand how residents perceived change in each of the 14 domains over the past five years. Focus groups were recruited from each ward and through special populations groups.