Thank you for receiving me. I am very pleased to be here today.
I would like to tell you about the Age-Friendly Cities Project, or Villes amies des aînés in French. It is an international project that has received Canada’s full support from the very beginning. More specifically the Public Health Agency of Canada has played a crucial role since the project was in its infancy. The first stage went from 2005 to 2007.
I handed out a short document. The project resulted in research being done in almost 33 cities in 22 different countries, including Sherbrooke. So we were involved. This enabled the World Health Organization to establish some broad parameters for dialogue and development on several themes related to our aging population and to explain how we can make our cities more suited to, and more liveable for, seniors.
This was a first experience for Quebec and I was still working with my colleague Marie Beaulieu at the time. With the research team that I am leading at the moment, we have developed a participation model for seniors, built around the broad parameters set by the World Health Organization. One of the parameters is active aging, which is built on three major pillars: health, safety and participation.
We feel that a framework of analysis has to include a holistic approach to health and that those three components contribute to better health.
I would like to draw your attention to what we call social participation. Social participation has a major impact on seniors' health. All studies show that seniors who are active and feel they contribute to society are in better health objectively, meaning it is a proven fact. They also feel—their subjective health—that their health has improved. This reduces morbidity and mortality in addition to increasing their feeling of well-being and satisfaction.
It is also scientifically proven that participation greatly reduces depression and symptoms of depression. This plays a role in keeping cognitive decline in check and in reducing the feeling of being in pain. It increases muscle strength and physical performance, while reducing the need for home support services.
For all those reasons, it is important to have age-friendly cities with appropriate facilities so that our seniors can take their rightful place and be full-time participants.
Together with seniors, we have started a project designed for them based on those principles. As a result, our seniors can act as decision makers since they are involved in every step of the project, including the assessment in their communities and their cities. They determine the process, identify what doesn't work and what could be improved. In addition, the seniors committee plays an active role up to when the project is implemented through an action plan. The seniors are even also invited to participate in finding solutions at that stage. So they are not just waiting for services, but they also have a say in those services. They become people who contribute to their communities through their associations and their involvement in the research stage. The seniors help to form control groups in which they are both participants and analysts at the same time.
As expected, the areas of focus at the World Health Organization are the major determinants of health. Each of those eight areas—outdoor spaces, transportation, housing, social participation, respect, inclusion, employment and civic participation, whether in the context of community support or communication as a way to be heard—is taken into account. For each of them, projects have been set up in our cities.
There is a key aspect. In Quebec, we have carried out dozens of projects. In some pilot projects, we have had over 450 people involved. For the projects currently underway, the model has been set up in the same way. We have seven pilot projects in 316 different communities. We also have committees in charge of pilot projects and of the control groups made up of seniors. One of the themes connected to the major determinants of health I just mentioned is obviously housing, having a home. That is a crucial finding.
I would like to share some of the things that came up. One of them is the importance of having housing conditions that work for seniors and that can help them stay in their homes for as long as possible so that they can be socially active without depending on services. For that to happen, adapted, adaptable and affordable housing is a must, since not everyone can afford to live in expensive homes.
I will quickly go on with my presentation. In order for aging to take place at home, it is also important to have access to local services. Those include groceries, leisure activities, health services, as well as a safe environment that is walkable or that has good public transit. Home support services for daily activities and seasonal work must also be set up.
There are 316 communities involved in Quebec. In Canada, over 500 cities are currently setting up those types of projects. The Quebec model is based on five years. The World Health Organization adopted the model as having three stages: assessment, action plan and implementation. Everything gets seniors involved in projects that are designed for them. Canada also uses that model. Seniors are at the heart of it. This initiative brought a new way of working together for various housing and health partners who, in most cases, did not know each other. It also makes knowledge transfer possible in terms of research. Research data are collected a number of times. The transfer is done between our research team at the Research Centre on Aging at the Université de Sherbrooke and non-profit organizations that administer and work with each of the cities in order to implement the model.
So, we went from seven pilot projects to 316 towns in very little time. That funding comes from Quebec's department for families and seniors, the ministère de la Famille et des Aînés du Québec. According to our minister, Ms. Blais, that is a social investment. That is basically all I have to say about Quebec.
Things are also going very well in Canada. With the help of the Public Health Agency of Canada, several provinces have moved on to the implementation phase. Three provinces are extremely active: Manitoba, which also has a centre for aging research; and British Columbia and Nova Scotia, which have been involved from the beginning and still are.
Internationally, our team and Canada play a key role as a global leader. Most researchers who developed the model are part of the World Health Organization's foundation. Together with my French and European colleagues, I am currently working on creating a francophone subgroup that will be ready next June.
I have used all my floor time, right?