Community engagement teams at aging services organizations prioritize the resident experience because they know residents’ voices help shape their communities. Unfortunately, not every resident speaks up. That’s where “Happy Aging” comes in. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the survey-driven prediction tool measures 23 observed indicators of resident well-being. This session will focus on the experiences of two life plan communities that engaged residents in a two-year research project to co-develop the “Happy Aging” tool. Presenters will describe the technology’s development process and residents’ participation in it. You’ll discover how objective behavioral data, when paired with AI, can accurately predict resident well-being and enable engagement teams to plan timely interventions.

Many providers of aging services are interested in new ways to deliver high-quality support in the home, especially for middle-market consumers. This session will explore how one multisite sponsor of affordable housing and life plan communities expanded its at-home services through a strategic mix of acquisitions, program innovation, and affiliations with home and community-based service providers. Presenters will also highlight two new programs they designed to serve life plan community residents and the broader community: a concierge care navigation and coaching service, and an at-home support program for older adults with incomes just below traditional private-pay thresholds. Gain concrete ideas for building or expanding scalable in-home services to serve current residents and the price-sensitive middle market.

Nearly half of U.S. veterans are 65 or older. Yet most aging services professionals lack training to address this population’s unique needs, and aging-focused resources rarely address them. This session aims to fill those gaps. Presenters will explain how military culture, trauma, service-related injuries, and the complexity of benefit eligibility shape veterans’ needs as they age. They will also discuss cultural and trauma-informed approaches to supporting veterans across housing, health, and social-service settings, including a pilot program that helps high-acuity veterans with low incomes age in place. You’ll gain insights into the program’s implementation and early outcomes and take home lessons you can adapt to your care and service settings.

Nonprofit providers of aging services must scale their organizations to serve an older population that continues to grow each year. But how can growth be achieved when land options are limited, and expansion appears cost-prohibitive? This session will showcase a group of single-site and multisite organizations exploring capital-efficient pathways to meet local needs and advance their missions. Presenters will provide an inside look at how these organizations developed new campuses, implemented phased expansions, engaged in adaptive reuse of existing buildings, and established satellite communities. Learn how successful organizations use disciplined planning and evaluation to identify opportunities and mitigate risk. Get the guidance you need to achieve sustainable growth and capital-efficient expansion in constrained markets.

Interested in leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) but concerned about maintaining a disciplined focus on privacy, legal compliance, and ethical safeguards? In this session, you’ll learn how a multisite senior living organization is achieving these goals—and how you can too. Presenters will show you how AI-generated video, messaging, and design templates can expand your marketing team’s capabilities while maintaining consistent brand quality. They’ll also explain how AI can work across your organization to streamline workflows, accelerate decision-making, enhance new-hire onboarding, and support personalized learning. You’ll leave this session with a clearer understanding of how AI expands organizational capacity when implemented with intentional guardrails and a human-first philosophy.

Cognitive health is a key predictor of independence, quality of life, and long-term care use among older adults. Yet many senior living communities still rely on passive brain-health approaches that lack measurable outcomes. This session will present results from a recent study showing that older adults who combined physical movement with cognitive processing in a single, interactive intervention achieved significant cognitive gains. Presenters will review the study’s findings, which suggest that even low-frequency, consistent training can yield measurable benefits. They’ll also offer tips for integrating cognitive-motor training into your wellness programs, reimbursement models, and population health strategies.

Keeping senior living board members aligned can be challenging in this age of competing priorities. Many boards struggle with fragmentation, uneven engagement, or unfocused conversations, even as organizational leaders face unprecedented challenges. During this session, you’ll learn how to build a more effective board by designing meetings that surface the right insights, promote shared understanding, and encourage strategic questions. Discover how to reinforce the board’s strategic focus between meetings, frame discussions during meetings, and avoid having to reset the conversation every quarter. Here’s your chance to get everyone on the same page—and keep them there—as your organization’s operating landscape evolves.

How can affordable housing providers help older residents age well in the community? This session will introduce the Residents Engaging in Authentic Conversations on Health (REACH) interview tool, which helps staff in affordable housing communities collect residents’ health and wellness information and use it to connect residents to appropriate services. Eaton Senior Communities in Lakewood, CO, developed the tool with researchers at the University of Denver and is now analyzing and sharing 10 years of resident wellness data with housing providers, healthcare programs, and payers. This session will examine the project’s implementation, early results, and best practices for promoting healthy, affordable aging.

No senior living organization is an island—at least not if it wants to succeed. This session will offer strategies to break down silos and foster collaboration within and beyond your organization. Presenters will show you how your sales, marketing, life enrichment, and philanthropy teams can work together to improve the resident experience and drive organizational growth. They’ll also explore the importance of engaging external partners to attract charitable support, enrich resident life, and position your organization as a trusted resource. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to unlock growth, deepen stakeholder engagement, and increase community impact by building bridges at home and across the broader community.

Senior living marketers and sales professionals are navigating a rapidly changing landscape as consumer behaviors shift, digital expectations rise, and artificial intelligence reshapes how prospects find and evaluate senior living options. During this session, a LeadingAge member and a marketing consultant will team up to share simple, replicable strategies to help teams overcome today’s marketing challenges. Presenters will show you how small adjustments can yield measurable improvements in your outreach and help you invigorate your current marketing plan to generate more qualified leads. You’ll gain a toolkit of practical strategies you can implement immediately to increase your visibility in the marketplace, improve engagement, and nurture conversion-ready prospects.

Intergenerational programs and community partnerships can enhance the well-being of older adults across care settings. This session will introduce purpose-driven engagement options that improve residents’ quality of life and enable them to share their wisdom with younger generations. Presenters will describe a summer camp for teens and older adults that offers opportunities for connection and storytelling; a LEGO-based engagement initiative; and a classroom experience that enables college students to conduct research informed by older adults. You’ll learn how to develop and scale these purpose-driven practices by identifying the right community partners, tailoring engagement strategies to residents with diverse cognitive and physical abilities, and integrating engagement into daily life.

Many senior living organizations are adept at implementing new technology solutions and devices to improve older adults’ daily lives. Yet these organizations often overlook an important truth: the success of any new technology depends not on a high-tech device but on the user’s confidence and ability to use it. That’s where digital literacy comes in. This session will show you how to foster curiosity rather than hesitation among older adults, enabling them to learn the digital skills needed for meaningful engagement with technology. Presenters will provide strategies to help you design digital literacy programs that empower older adults and ensure they are not left behind in the digital age.

As the desire to age in place grows among older adults, Continuing Care at Home (CCaH) programs are emerging as an innovative alternative to traditional senior living. In return for an entrance fee and monthly dues, CCaH members receive comprehensive long-term care services while remaining in their own homes. During this session, three CCaH providers will compare CCaH models, detailing their financial structures, membership designs, and operational approaches. Presenters will help you identify which CCaH model best aligns with your organization’s mission, market, and strategic goals. You’ll discover key factors that contributed to the success of organizations that have launched and grown CCaH programs, as well as the challenges they faced along the way.

Leading nonprofit senior housing providers are expanding their missions to serve a broader spectrum of older adults with diverse lifestyles and affordability needs. During this session, you’ll meet representatives from one organization that built an active adult development one mile from its existing full-continuum campus, and from another that integrated low- to middle-income housing into its broader development strategy. You’ll take away tips for designing and financing a range of projects that fall outside the traditional continuum while complementing existing campus offerings. Here’s your chance to reflect on your growth and consider new projects that could strengthen your market position and advance your mission.

Sixty percent of home and community-based service (HCBS) providers have faced negative margins or program closures over the past three years because of stagnant reimbursement rates and rising costs. This session will offer several solutions to help your HCBS program survive the squeeze. Presenters will share how their agency navigated severe reimbursement challenges, made tough program decisions, and used innovative practices to restore its financial health. Discover how they implemented geographic clustering of clients to improve staffing efficiency and leveraged a remote global administrative workforce to reduce overhead. You’ll gain strategies to right-size your agency, maximize your bottom line, and better support clients and communities amid funding challenges.

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Many senior living organizations are counting on it. This session will feature an organization that used visual storytelling to attract a new market segment to its senior housing options and to build support for a campus expansion among current residents. Presenters will explain what visual storytelling entails, how it drives effective marketing, and how to assess the appropriate use of AI-generated imagery, architectural renderings, and video flythroughs. You’ll gain practical guidance on effective visual storytelling methods and a candid assessment of approaches that fall short.

Partnering with academic health institutions can help your senior living organization unlock resources, foster innovation, and improve older adults’ quality of life. During this session, representatives from a university and a life plan community will describe their collaboration and explain how it created opportunities for both partners. Presenters will outline how the community gained access to cutting-edge medical research and health screenings, while university researchers collaborated with community team members and residents to co-create solutions to pressing challenges. You’ll learn how to identify and approach potential partners, bridge cultural gaps, navigate challenges, and sustain momentum. Get ready to connect aging and academia to deliver measurable benefits to all stakeholders.

Most of us are familiar with “co-ops,” multi-unit residential buildings collectively owned and democratically managed by their occupants. This session will examine how a nonprofit senior living organization adopted this commercial real estate model to empower “resident members” of its housing communities to govern themselves. Leaders of the organization will explain how residents participate in decision-making through councils and committees and volunteer to assist with or lead day-to-day operations in collaboration with the property manager. You’ll take home a structured outline of the cooperative housing management model and a new understanding of how this level of active participation helps resident members take pride in their housing and lead healthier, more enriched lives.

Many senior living providers struggle to design communities that reflect older adults’ priorities because information about the factors shaping consumer decisions remains trapped in their data systems. This session will show you how to free that data. Presenters will explore how a multisite senior living organization unified its internal data—including survey responses, referral information, and wellness engagement statistics—to uncover the drivers of senior living decisions. They’ll share what the organization learned from its siloed data about consumer preferences, show you how to free your own data, and offer strategies for using it to design new programs and consumer outreach initiatives.

Most home and community-based service (HCBS) agencies cite regulation, staffing, and the growth of managed care as their primary obstacles to growth. While these issues are real, this session will show that most obstacles to HCBS growth, quality, and financial success are internal rather than external. Representatives of a life plan community’s HCBS subsidiary will share highlights from their decade of experience helping senior living communities develop and operate home care, home health, and hospice services. You’ll gain insights into the pitfalls senior living organizations encounter when starting and operating HCBS agencies and take home practical, proactive, and remedial strategies to optimize your operations.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining recognition worldwide. But what is AI’s real impact on aging services providers today, and how could it shape the future of care? This session will cut through the hype to answer the questions on every provider’s mind: Which parts of AI are real? Which are a waste of resources? A panel of senior living leaders will share how they’ve used AI to improve operational efficiency, support team members, and engage residents more effectively. They’ll also explain how AI helps them manage data security, integrate organizational systems, and enhance operations and services. You’ll discover AI’s transformative possibilities and learn how to develop your own AI implementation plan.

The marketing function at senior living communities isn’t just for the sales team. Communities seeking a competitive edge must put marketing at the forefront of everything they do, including employee recruitment, resident events, and fundraising. This session will focus on how a multisite senior living organization created an internal marketing agency that operates independently while supporting the organization’s sales function. Presenters will explain how the agency built its capacity to support every internal function and how its four-person team uses artificial intelligence to handle tedious tasks, freeing team members to focus on advancing the organization’s mission. You’ll leave this session with a roadmap to expand marketing support across your organization and leverage technology to boost your efforts.