By Lauren Ingeno
D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, B.S. ’64, swore George Washington President Steven Knapp into the D.C. Age-Friendly Task Force on Thursday evening.
President Knapp will co-chair the 23-person task force with Beatriz Otero, the deputy mayor for health and human services, and aid Mayor Gray in making the District of Columbia more accessible, inclusive and secure for seniors.
“I think it’s going to be a really extraordinary process that will further enhance the quality of life in our great capital city,” President Knapp said.
The Age-Friendly Task Force is part of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) age-friendly initiative, which is intended to help cities prepare for two global demographic trends: increasing urbanization and the rapid aging of urban populations. D.C. joined the WHO Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities in 2012, and Mayor Gray created the task force one year later.
“We want to be able to say to the world that we have made a commitment, and we are going to live up to it by 2017,” Mayor Gray said.
The task force is made up of what Mayor Gray called an “all-star cast” of representatives from organizations such as the AARP, the American Psychiatric Association, the Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Office of Planning, among many others.
The representatives will produce a strategic plan of recommendations to transform D.C. into an age-friendly city, advising on subjects including affordable housing, clean outdoor spaces, reliable transportation and social inclusion. Two task force meetings will be held at GW.
Ms. Otero said the task force’s job will be to bring together information collected from various processes and to reach out to “all different sectors of the community,” ensuring that it’s not only the “usual suspects” who have the chance to offer input.
She also expressed gratitude in having President Knapp as a co-chair and GW as a partner in the project.
“Efforts like this—that cut across so many different sectors of the city—will really value and really gain a great deal from having the academic support that a university, through all of its various departments, will be able to lend us,” Ms. Otero said.
GW is already committed to efforts related to the mission of the task force, said President Knapp. He pointed to the GW Institute for Spirituality and Health as well as the Center on Aging, Health and Humanities as examples. The university also actively supports the Foggy Bottom West End Village “Aging in Place” project, President Knapp said.
But thinking about how to ensure older citizens can be active, contributing members of the community is an effort that expands beyond D.C., Ms. Otero said.
“It’s an international movement about how all of us see ourselves in our communities, in our cities, in our neighborhoods as being able to live and thrive there for as long as we want to,” she said.