Research into the sustainability of age-friendly initiatives is important and timely, particularly from the rather neglected perspective of older adults living in non-metropolitan (rural) environments. This paper addresses this gap by reporting on a Canadian rural community case study to understand the perspectives of older adults on the implementation and sustainability of their local age-friendly program. Findings from exploratory interviews with 10 older adults suggest that rural age-friendly initiatives may be limited in their ability to achieve larger-scale outcomes aimed at addressing broad aging issues facing rural communities. Further, our findings demonstrate that those ‘aging in place’ may continue to do so with the support of age-friendly programing, while those ‘stuck in place’ are largely unaffected by age-friendly programs. We advocate for additional in-depth examinations of rural age-friendly sustainability, including a greater emphasis on the diversity of older adult perspectives.

研究关爱老人倡议的可持续性是重要且及时的，特别是从生活在非大都市（农村）环境中的老年人相当被忽视的角度来看。本文通过报告加拿大农村社区案例研究来解决这一差距，以了解老年人对当地老年友好计划的实施和可持续性的看法。对 10 名老年人的探索性访谈结果表明，农村关爱老人倡议在实现旨在解决农村社区面临的广泛老龄化问题的更大规模成果方面的能力可能有限。此外，我们的研究结果表明，在关爱老人项目的支持下，那些“原地养老”可能会继续这样做，而那些“原地养老”的人在很大程度上不受关爱老人项目的影响。