Age-Friendly Local Business

The Age-friendly Local Business Initiative (AFLBI) fosters age-friendly environments to help businesses attract, engage and retain older adults as customers by considering the age-friendly features of their business. AFLBI provides resources, materials and assistance to help business owners identify, promote and improve their age-friendly features by making low and no-cost changes to ensure everyone can enjoy access to a variety of goods and services, regardless of their age.

During my tenure at The New York Academy of Medicine, I was tasked with leading and reinvigorating this initiative, developing new programs and materials, and creating sustainable partnerships with local business serving organisations. Below are some of the projects/materials I led the creative process on.

I also co-authored a chapter of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities in International Comparison about our overall program Age-friendly NYC , speaking to my experience working with small businesses and building out the initiative. 

URBAN INTERACTION DESIGN | POLICY

AGE-FRIENDLY BUSINESS GUIDE

The age-friendly business guide is designed to provide insight into the older adult market and assist small businesses in attracting more older adult customers by providing practical no-cost and low-cost tips on how to reach and engage this growing market.

It includes several well-researched design strategies around lighting, sound, physical space, and service design in order to empower older adults, small business owners, and community members to co-create shopping experiences that are great for everyone – no matter their age.

This document has also been published in Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and French. Thousands have copies have been distributed to small businesses in every borough of New York City and several other cities around the world have reached out to me to discuss these principles. This work has also been presented at major conferences nationally and internationally. It was most recently featured at the 2015 International Downtown Association conference in San Franciso by leaders from three NYC Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and community groups.

Age-friendly NYC and Age-friendly Local Business Initiative are solely the copyrighted property of my previous employer The New York Academy of Medicine and other partners. 

AGE-FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD WEBSITE

The Age-friendly Neighborhood Initiative is an opportunity to build upon the rich experiences of older adults and leverage the strengths of local neighbourhoods that make each New York City community unique.

Funded by the New York City Council, the Age-friendly Neighbourhood Initiative engages older adults and local stakeholders to implement solutions that leverage community assets to maximise the social and economic participation of older New Yorkers.

I helped to vision, design, and build this website in conjunction with our talented web developer Michele and internal communications team from start to finish. 

This site has several unique age-friendly features I helped to develop such as automatic translation into the three languages spoken by the majority of older adults in NYC: Spanish, Mandarin, and French, as well as a feature allowing those with visual impairment to resize text and highlight text to have it read aloud. 

It also features GIS maps of age-friendly Neighbourhoods that include searchable features of interest for older adults (senior centers, parks, libraries etc.)