The vision of the Eagle County Aging Well Initiative is that Eagle County older adults age in place with the highest possible quality of life. The initiative began in 2015 with the formation of a steering committee and committed staff members. The steering committee identified 9 priority areas to focus the work around. These were identified by reviewing local data sets and conducting one on one phone interviews with senior adults throughout
the county. The areas include: Housing, Transportation, Connection to Resources, Social & Community
Engagement, Healthcare, Employment, Home Services, Preventive Health, and Community Design/Built
Environment. To further prioritize these areas, a community convening was held where community members
attended to narrow this list to four areas to take action on. These four were Housing, Healthcare, Connection to
Resources, and Social & Community Engagement. Each area included an overarching goal along with various
objectives to complete to address the goal. Working groups were then formed for each area to begin working on
the objectives. To date, three of the four (Housing, Connection to Resources, Social & Community Engagment)
work groups accomplished the objectives under their goal. The Healthcare group is continuing work on a very
successful project and will incorporate preventive health into their future endeavors. We have also created a
strong partnership with our county Planning Department and have made great progress on some of the
community design/built environment work through a policy scan that pointed out age-friendly policies in the
various municipalities master plans. It also gave recommendations on how to enhance or expand those policies.
Overall, we are trying to change the perception around aging, working to show our community that we are all
aging and how this work benefits us all in the long run.