Using local data on ageing

Data should ideally be used throughout the process of making your area more Age-friendly. Its use aligns with the World Health Organisation’s Age-friendly Programme Cycle, including:

• Engage and Understand: producing a baseline assessment will help you understand where you are starting from, and to engage and persuade others to support the work
• Plan Strategically: understanding and setting out key trends, issues or beneficiary groups can help make the case for resources, prioritise, and align your work with other local strategies and programmes
• Act and Implement: understanding smaller geographies within your local authority, the needs of different groups of people, or how you compare with other similar places can help you target campaigns, services, and initiatives.
• Monitor and Evaluate: Keeping track of key data related to your age-friendly priorities can help you see the difference your work is making or why it is still needed. 

A local State of Ageing report and a baseline assessment are both tools that use data to understand and communicate how well people are ageing in your place.  Either can be adapted to suit your needs. A Local State of Ageing could also be used as a baseline assessment if undertaken within the first stage of the WHO programme cycle.

Some main differences are: 

• Baseline assessment: Carrying out some form of baseline assessment is a requirement for communities adopting the WHO’s Age-friendly Communities framework. It is carried out within the first stage of the programme cycle. Dependant on resources it might be a standalone document, or a section in another document.  For example a Health and Wellbeing strategy or a JSNA, with a thematic focus on ageing and older people.
• Local State of Ageing report: modelled on the Centre for Ageing Better’s national report of the same name it follows a more consistent methodology and aims to build a comprehensive picture of the quantitative data available locally.  It can be created at any point by any community wanting to better understand how people are ageing locally. Some places that have been working on Age-friendly for a long time have used it as a way to refresh their broader understanding and engage or reengage stakeholders, like in Leeds, or to inform a new wider strategy being undertaken for their place.

Most local areas will have access to a team or individuals who know what data sources are available and can help you access these.  Look to involve your local authorities insights or data team, if they have one, Public Health are important stakeholders in this work and local universities can also be key collaborators in Age-friendly Communities to help conduct surveys, run research projects or evaluate local programmes.