Abstract
Planning for aging populations has been a growing concern for policy makers across the globe. Integral to strategies for promoting healthy aging are initiatives for ‘aging in place’, linked to services and care that allow older people to remain in their homes and communities. Technological innovations—and especially the development of digital technologies—are increasingly presented as potentially important in helping to support these initiatives. In this study, we employed qualitative document analysis to examine and compare the discursive framing of technology in aging-in-place policy documents collected in three countries: The Netherlands, Spain, and Canada. We focus on the framing of technological interventions in relation to values such as quality of life, autonomy/independence, risk management, social inclusion, ‘active aging’, sustainability/efficiency of health care delivery, support for caregivers, and older peoples’ rights. The findings suggest that although all three countries reflected common understandings of the challenges of aging populations, the desirability of supporting aging in place, and the appropriateness of digital technologies in supporting the latter, different value-framings were apparent. We argue that attention to making these values explicit is important to understanding the role of social policies in imagining aging futures and the presumed role of technological innovation in their enactment.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 35 |
| Journal | Societies |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We examined documents from three countries—The Netherlands, Spain, and Canada— to explore the ways in which digital technologies for AIP are presented. Participating researchers from each country were collaborators on research funded by the More Years Better Lives Joint Programming Initiative. The three countries discussed here have some similarities, being developed Western countries and participants in international bodies such as the UN, WHO, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; however, they also represent different geopolitical environments and policy regimes (northern Europe, southern Europe, and North America). Although space does not permit a full discussion of the complex and particular geographic, political, and social contexts for each country, we highlight some key features here.
Funding Information:
Funding: This research was funded through the More Years, Better Lives Joint Programming Initiative, JTC 2017, BCONNECT@HOME.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Funding
We examined documents from three countries—The Netherlands, Spain, and Canada— to explore the ways in which digital technologies for AIP are presented. Participating researchers from each country were collaborators on research funded by the More Years Better Lives Joint Programming Initiative. The three countries discussed here have some similarities, being developed Western countries and participants in international bodies such as the UN, WHO, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; however, they also represent different geopolitical environments and policy regimes (northern Europe, southern Europe, and North America). Although space does not permit a full discussion of the complex and particular geographic, political, and social contexts for each country, we highlight some key features here. Funding: This research was funded through the More Years, Better Lives Joint Programming Initiative, JTC 2017, BCONNECT@HOME.
Keywords
- aging in place
- Canada
- Netherlands
- social policy
- Spain
- technology