The municipality of Jaguariúna, part of the metropolitan region of Campinas (SP), is placed high in several global and regional rankings (e.g. among 100 of over 5.000 municipalities in the HDI) and took a leading role in advancing the implementation of the Agenda 2030 in Brazil. The municipality received several awards such as the American Awards of the United Nations in 2010 for the eradication of child mortality and is recognised as one of Brazil’s best cities to grow old.
These positive results attracted a private sector company, which – through tax incentives – proposed the Age-Friendly City’s project to our Municipal Council of Older Persons. With the support of the International Longevity Centre Brazil (ILC-BR) and academics of the University of Campinas (Unicamp), we conducted an in-depth situational analysis with participation of our older population. This provided us with the evidence we required to develop an age-friendly city action plan.
Existing services and programmes are coordinated mainly by the Secretary for Social Assistance, the Secretary for Health and the Secretary for Youth, Sports and Leisure whose “Viva Melhor” (Live Better) programme attracts over 200 people aged 50+ on a monthly basis. It is also one of about 500 municipalities in Brazil that offer a programme called “Melhor em Casa” (Better at home), which provides domiciliary primary health care for bedridden people. The multiprofessional team supports about 90 families.
While the municipality already offers many services and activities targeted to older persons, the participatory research with older citizens helped us to identify priority areas for action, which are addressed in our intersecretarial action plan to be implemented between 2019 and 2021. This plan also counts on the participation of other municipal secretaries that did not previously include older people as a specific target group of their activities.