An Interactive, Web-Based Roadmap for Healthy Aging

By Richard Shank

In May 2009, the University of North Carolina Institute on Aging published the Healthy Aging Roadmap, designed to promote healthy aging in North Carolina. The Institute now offers the Roadmap as an interactive, Web-based wiki tool, which is accessible at http://www.ncroadmap.org.

Allowing community and health care providers to upload and share information related to evidence-based health promotion programs, this tool’s goal, according to Tiffany Schubert, a University of North Carolina research scientist, “is to facilitate the dissemination of health promotion programs to older adults throughout the state.”

The original Roadmap provides those interested in health promotion programs with enough information to set up and run a successful program at their location. It’s a step-by-step guide to help identify a community’s health needs, the programs appropriate to meeting these needs, setting up and establishing partnerships, and implementing the programs.

Roadmaps such as this one are becoming increasingly important as communities seek to adapt to their aging citizenry. To access the original, visit http://www.aging.unc.edu.

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