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EngAging Illinois Overview
EngAging Illinois: A Comprehensive Plan for Living Well is an integrated, multi-sector plan for aging, among the first in our country to lay out a comprehensive strategy that improves the lives and addresses the needs of older adults, people with disabilities, and caregivers.
The Plan was created after Governor JB Pritzker signed an Executive Order in August 2024. It establishes goals and priorities to help make Illinois communities great places for people of all ages to live, work, and grow older. The Plan aims to help all of us — no matter where we live, how much money we make, what we look like, what we believe, or what abilities we have — live safely, stay healthy, and feel hopeful about the future.
EngAging Illinois emphasizes fairness and inclusion. It offers ideas to improve important services, programs, and policies that we all need as we age. The Plan also encourages all of us to think differently about aging and recognizes the knowledge, experience, and contributions older adults bring to our communities.
The Plan is organized around four key focus areas:
1
Creating Livable and Connected Communities
Developing people-centered, physical, and social infrastructure, including:
- Innovations to facilitate aging in place
- Housing security and stability
- Transportation
- Social connection and community engagement
2
Ensuring Health for All Ages
Ensuring high-quality, age-friendly, culturally-attuned health care and prevention, including:
- Health education, promotion, and screening
- Coordinated and accessible care
3
Investing in Caregivers
Expanding investment in:
- Well-being and resources for paid and unpaid caregivers
- Cultivating a well-trained and sustainable caregiving workforce
4
Affording Aging
Working to guarantee that older adults have:
- Economic security and financial health
- Estate planning resources
- Access to long-term care support
- Freedom from fraud, neglect, and elder abuse
Vision and Core Principles
EngAging Illinois seeks to realize a vision of Illinois as a state where:
- Older adults can live and age well while remaining in their homes and communities of choice.
- All people, of all ages, are confident they can age well throughout their lives.
- Both paid and unpaid caregiving are well-supported and beneficial for both the caregivers and the people for whom they are caring.
- The implications for older adults are considered every time a local, regional, or statewide policy or program is drafted or implemented.
This plan was also written with these four core principles front of mind:
- Bettering the lives of all of us as we age is essential to improving equity and expanding inclusion.
- Considering everyone throughout the life course is crucial, because we are each getting older all the time, and multigenerational solidarity is central to societal progress.
- Remaking the workforce, with special attention to caregiving but including health and social service delivery of all kinds, is paramount to meeting not only this generation of older people’s needs, but the next.
- Allowing people to remain in their own communities for as long as they like – through person-centered planning – recognizes older people’s autonomy and is at the heart of maintaining and strengthening an age-friendly Illinois.
