The Centre for an Age-Friendly Norway is a national competence centre that seeks to enable development of sustainable and age-friendly communities. Our goal is for seniors to be able to live good, meaningful and independent lives for as long as possible. Older people’s capabilities should be used for optimal benefit to themselves and their community.

The Centre’s work is founded on collaboration with various community actors through a municipal network and partnerships with businesses, organisations and researchers. The Centre is based in the city of Ålesund and is organised as a section within the Norwegian Directorate of Health.

The centre for an age-friendly Norway was established as part of a quality reform for older people “A full life – all your life” in 2017/2018. One of the main objectives of the reform was the establishment of an age-friendly Norway programme, the centre was given the responsibility of implementing this programme. A new reform coming into effect from 2024 onwards: “Community and independence – live safely at home” is focusing on age-friendly development and the Centre has been given several tasks within the reform. The programme for an age-friendly Norway is continued with a more long-term focus, until 2030 and age-friendly development is emphasized. The reforms constitute a follow up of a “National strategy for an age-friendly Norway – More years, more opportunities”, launched in 2016. The strategy and reforms provide a powerful backdrop for Norway`s age-friendly development, providing a platform for different strategies and collaboration between many stakeholders and between different sectors. The centre is responsible for the majority of the operationalization of these strategic documents, however, the latest reform has been developed across a number of ministries and different ministries will be responsible for implementation although the main ministry responsible is the ministry for health.

A national network was set up as pre-project in 2019, before the centre was formally established in 2021. In the period 2019-2021 the host for the network was the Norwegian association of local and regional authorities, before it was taken over by the centre in February 2021. The centre re-established the network and embarked upon a structured recruitment campaign. The current number of members is 216 cities and communities (October 2023), of which Oslo and Trondheim are also members of the WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities.

Local government is strong and independent in Norway and where the majority of age-friendly initiatives within the different domains will be planned and implemented. The network is a platform for exchange, learning and capacity building among cities and communities. The network facilitates peer learning/exchange, webinars on age-friendly topics are organized on a regular basis with relevant research and examples from the cities and communities to bring out challenges and opportunities pertaining to the different age-friendly domains. Counselling is organized one-to-one or to groups, according to the needs expressed by the members. The Centre takes part in development and or research projects with the cities and communities, most often as part of a reference group or in an advisory capacity. Visits and participation at meetings, conferences, co-creation activities are undertaken as much as time permits, at a monthly basis and sometimes even weekly basis. In all these activities, we will promote the use of the Agefriendly World as a tool for information exchange, networking, accessing resources and age-friendly practices. It will be useful to all members, especially those who are more advanced.

The centre organizes a yearly conference “Together for an age-friendly Norway”, where we bring together stakeholders from all sectors, government, cities and communities, organizations, businesses and others

In addition to working with cities and communities, the programme for an age-friendly Norway stipulated the establishment of a platform for collaboration with and for organisations and businesses. The main objective of this platform is to raise awareness of age-friendly policies in the workplace, partners who join are asked to assess to what degree their organization/business is age-friendly and establish how they can work towards becoming more age-friendly. The platform provides an arena for exchange, collaboration among the partners, but also with the cities and communities. This collaboration may be by way of a joint event or a joint project. In order to raise awareness of an ageing workforce and opportunities and challenges, the platform creates campaigns, organizes events, such as seminars and conferences in order to highlight the challenges and examples of best practice and research, when relevant. The partners can be strategic or collaborative partners, the latter requires less commitment. The partner platform also aims to foster more collaboration between the partners themselves, enabling them to see synergies and work together on projects enhancing age-friendly knowledge, awareness and ultimately, more age-friendly practices.

Furthermore, the government appointed a national council for an age-friendly Norway with representatives from the following organizations: the Norwegian association of local and regional authorities, Oslo Metropolitan University, the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise, The Association of NGOs in Norway – a forum organization for the voluntary sector in Norway, ICT-Norway, the Norwegian state housing bank and the Pensioner`s association. The council has a mandate to advice the centre on priorities, strategies and operations as well as influence public debate on age-friendly issues.

In order to facilitate more contact with and raising awareness directed at the individual citizen, the Centre is responsible for a major campaign running over several years on planning for old age with topics related to housing, activities, work and financial planning to name a few areas.