Initiatives to promote aging in place have emerged rapidly in the United States across various health care settings (e.g., acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities) and broader community settings (e.g., public social service agencies). Moreover, recent federal policies include a growing number of provisions for local efforts to promote aging in place. Despite emerging bodies of research that have described singular initiatives in their own right, there has been very little scholarship that forges conceptual linkages across this increasingly vast domain of research, practice, and policy. Integrative theory development is critical to ensure that aging-in-place initiatives do not become fragmented from each other. This article uses insights from ecological frameworks—specifically Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory and M. Powell Lawton’s general ecological model of aging—to conceptualize a range of programs as aging-in-place initiatives and for describing their similarities and differences, particularly in terms of the features through which they intend to promote aging in place. Theoretically derived dimensions along which to characterize aging-in-place initiatives include environment-focused aspects (e.g., the types of social systems and structures that the initiatives target for change) and person-focused aspects (e.g., the extent to which the initiatives target particular subgroups of older adults). The article concludes with a discussion on how these theoretically derived dimensions can be used to advance and integrate research, practice, and policy to systematically develop and expand aging-in-place initiatives.

Public policy and programs for older adults traditionally have focused on the delivery of benefits to targeted individuals. Over the past decade, age-friendly community initiatives (AFCIs) have developed as a paradigm shift in contrast to this predominant focus. AFCIs engage stakeholders from multiple sectors within a typically local geographic area to make social and/or physical environments more conducive to older adults’ health, well-being, and ability to age in place and in the community. We describe three general categories of AFCIs, including community planning approaches, support-focused approaches, and cross-sector partnership approaches. Following from this conceptual overview, we posit four key policy-relevant questions with implications for the expansion of AFCIs, including what public policy supports are necessary for the implementation of AFCIs across diverse communities, how entities outside of aging can be engaged to collaborate, to what extent advocates for various models can work together, and how the outcomes of these initiatives can be rigorously evaluated. We conclude by discussing how AFCIs are germane to the primary issues highlighted by the 2015 White House Conference on Aging.

Background. Accumulating evidence indicates that stress impairs sleep quality. Few studies, however, have examined the extent to which early life stress

Objectives:This study examined childhood socioeconomic status (SES) as a predictor of later life cognition and the extent to which midlife SES accounts for associations. Methods: Data came from 5,074 participants in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Measures from adolescence included parents’ educational attainment, father’s occupational status, and household income. Memory and language/executive function were assessed at ages 65 and 72 years. Results: Global childhood SES was a stronger predictor of baseline levels of language/executive function than baseline memory. Associations involving parents’ education were reduced in size and by statistical significance when accounting for participants’ midlife SES, whereas associations involving parental income and occupational status became statistically nonsignificant. We found no associations between childhood SES and change in cognition. Discussion: Findings contribute to growing evidence that socioeconomic differences in childhood have potential consequences for later life cognition, particularly in terms of the disparate levels of cognition with which people enter later life.

Recognizing religiosity and spirituality as related yet distinct phenomena, and conceptualizing psychological well-being as a multidimensional construct, this study examines whether individuals' frequency of formal religious participation and spiritual perceptions are independently associated with diverse dimensions of psychological well-being (negative affect, positive affect, purpose in life, positive relations with others, personal growth, self-acceptance, environmental mastery, and autonomy). Data came from 1,564 respondents in the 2005 National Survey of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS). Higher levels of spiritual perceptions were independently associated with better psychological well-being across all dimensions, and three of these salutary associations were stronger among women than men. Greater formal religious participation was independently associated only with more purpose in life and (among older adults) personal growth; greater formal religious participation was also associated with less autonomy. Overall, results suggest a different pattern of independent linkages between formal religious participation and spiritual perceptions across diverse dimensions of psychological well-being.

Studies have identified living alone as a risk factor for loneliness in later life without examining whether other living arrangements might also pose risk. The authors used data from a national sample of adults aged 57 and older to estimate associations between a variety of living arrangements and loneliness. In contrast to respondents living with a spouse/partner, respondents who were living alone, living with children without a spouse/partner, and living with other relatives or friends without a spouse/partner reported more loneliness. Living alone was associated with greater loneliness among men than women, but living with children without a spouse/partner was associated with greater loneliness among women. Results suggest the importance for interventions aimed at reducing loneliness to target adults who live alone, as well as adults who live with others besides intimate partners, and to consider gender differences in the propensity for particular types of living arrangements to affect loneliness.