Yarmouth Receives Tufts Grant for Age-Friendly Community Study

surveyYARMOUTH – The town of Yarmouth was recently awarded a grant from the Tufts Health Plan Foundation for its Age-Friendly Community study.

The grants were given to advance community efforts toward the World Health Organization’s standards for age-friendly communities.

Yarmouth Director of Senior Services Kathi Bailey says the grant funds will go towards a survey and other work performed by the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

“UMass will analyze all the of those reports, look at the data collected from our focus groups and the survey, and then create a findings report that will be presented to the town leaders,” Bailey said.

Bailey said the survey will have questions designed to find out how the community feels about outdoor spaces and buildings; social participation; transportation; housing; respect and social inclusion; communication and information; civic participation and employment; and community support and health.

Bailey said receiving the grant helped the town to save money and not have to fund the UMass survey.

“Getting that expertise to reveal what’s really happening in Yarmouth, relative to these eight categories, is really important to us,” she said. “With UMass’s help we should be able to deliver statistically significant data to the leaders in this community,” she said.”

The multi-year grant is for $44,000 in the first year and the amounts for the following years will be determined by the outcome of the findings report.

Bailey said the process to receive the grant awards included applying to become part of the World Health Organization’s network, which was done in early 2014.

The town then applied for the Tufts grant in December of 2014.

The grant will also fund multiple internship positions from Cape Cod Community College and Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School.

The findings report, compiled by UMass Boston, should be presented to town officials this December.



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