Skip to main content

Christine Happel Named New Age-Friendly Innovation Center Assistant Director

September 13, 2022

The Ohio State University College of Social Work (CSW) is pleased to announce the appointment of Christine Happel, MSW, LSW, as assistant director of the Age-Friendly Innovation Center (AFIC).

Prior to their new role, Happel served as founding director for Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resources Center’s Village in the Ville. Happel also is the founding director of The Greater Columbus Network of Villages, supporting the growth of the village movement in central Ohio.  They have also been a CSW community lecturer since 2019. Their experience ranges from grants manager and senior supportive services outreach to prevention education coordinator for the Ohio Coalition of Adult Protective Services and behavioral intervention specialist for St. Vincent’s Family Services. Happel received their MSW from the college in 2014.

Happel has worked with AFIC for many years as a partner on initiatives such as Lyfting the Villages, launching multiple neighborhood circulators, and our COVID-19 response initiatives. Their work has been grounded in supporting older adults aging in community and building communities where we each feel seen, heard, and valued.  Happel also coined the phrase, “Aging: So cool everyone is doing it!” that has been used in various positive aging campaigns locally.

As AFIC’s assistant director, Happel will be responsible for implementing the program’s community assessment, planning and strategic plan as well as community outreach and serving on local, regional, state, and national advocacy and advisory boards and committees.   Co-designing pilot programs alongside older adults to address community challenges through proactive outreach or response will be a key focus for Happel. They will also support the coordination and implementation of various on-going community efforts, such as the Services Roundtable of Franklin County and Age-Friendly Technical Assistance Program (TAP), a first-of-its-kind initiative to increase the number of and support to Ohio Communities working toward age-friendly goals.

AFIC is the first university-based center in the nation to embrace the full spectrum of needs, opportunities and complex issues related to age-friendly communities—bringing to bear the resources, partnerships, and brainpower of a top-tier research university with the expertise of older residents to transform our communities and make them more livable for all. Its mission is to innovate with older adults through research, education, and engagement to ensure inclusion and build resiliency to make communities more age friendly–all achieved through collaborating with Ohio State interdisciplinary faculty, students, and community partners.

Building off more than six years of work, the AFIC continues to prioritize the contributions of older residents to improve social, built and health environments that support livability for people of all ages and abilities. The community impacts of this work reverberate beyond older adults, increasing quality of life for individuals of all age groups and abilities within and outside central Ohio, and its results are shared with partners across the United States and around the globe.

AFIC is recognized as a national leader in the age-friendly network, having secured over $2 million from public and private funders, AFIC has published nine manuscripts and numerous reports in partnership with students, interdisciplinary faculty and community members.  AFIC has reached over 16,000 individuals through community-based participatory research, presentations, surveys, focus groups or walk audits. Through the Scholars Program, course collaborations and internships, AFIC has engaged 120 students representing 17 disciplines.

Last year, Dr. Holly Dabelko-Schoeny, associate professor and AFIC director of research, received Ohio State’s Community Engagement Scholar award and the initiative was also honored with the university’s Outreach and Engagement award in 2020. The CSWE Commission for Diversity and Social Economic Justice honored Age-Friendly with the Community Partnership Action Award in 2019. 

Before receiving center designation in 2021, AFIC operated as Age-Friendly Columbus and Franklin County under the college for three years and joined the World Health Organization and AARP International Network of Age-Friendly Communities in 2016. Age-Friendly Columbus previously operated under the guidance of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC).

The AFIC is located at Rev1 Labs, 1275 Kinnear Road. Happel joins new AFIC Director Marisa Sheldon, who was recently appointed, succeeding Katie White who led the initiative and succeeding center since 2016.

For more information about AFIC, click here