The City of Cleveland is home to more than 70,000 residents age 60 and older, who have a wide range of characteristics, abilities, strengths and needs. This number is likely to grow over time as people are living longer and healthier lives. Cleveland undertook a comprehensive assessment of community need in 2015 and spent the following year developing a plan, using the five-part cycle developed by WHO as a guide to engage in the process of becoming more age-friendly. The Center for Community Solutions was identified as the lead agency for this strategy, which seeks to understand the long-term care continuum within the City of Cleveland. Community Solutions spent much of 2018 collecting and compiling information about long-term care within the City of Cleveland, including key informant interviews, examining national and state data on long-term care and developing methodologies to estimate need and ability to pay. This report is meant to increase understanding of needs and gaps relating to long-term care in the community. Ultimately, the desired future state is that residents have options along the continuum within Cleveland so they are not forced to move out of the community as their needs increase.

Despite mental health parity laws passed more than a decade ago, consumers have very little awareness of insurance coverage rights for mental health and substance use disorder treatment. Ohio’s insurance laws also conflict with federal laws that don’t allow insurers to limit mental health and substance use disorder services in a more restrictive way than for physical health services. Learn more about the quest for parity in this new report.

Cleveland, like most communities around the country, is a place where your life outcomes can be determined by your ZIP code, and where people who are black face significantly more challenges than white people.