Toward Age-Friendly Policies: Using the Framework of Age-Friendliness to Evaluate the COVID-19 Measures from the Perspectives of Older People in the Netherlands.

Protective measures that were taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, targeted older people as an at-risk group. The objective of this article is to investigate how older people in the Netherlands experienced the mitigation measures and whether these measures endorse and promote the idea of an age-friendly world. The WHO conceptual framework of age-friendliness, which consists of eight areas, has been used for a framework analysis of 74 semi-structured interviews with older Dutch adults, that were held during the first and the second wave of the pandemic. The results of the analysis indicate that the areas of social participation, respect and inclusion were affected most, and the measures concerning communication and the health services were experienced as age-unfriendly. The WHO framework is a promising tool for assessment of social policies, and we suggest its further development for this purpose.