Mengyin builds warm integrated elderly care system for rural residents

Mengyin County of Linyi City has launched a people-oriented upgrade of rural elderly care services, tackling the structural aging challenges of mountainous rural areas. As a typical mountain county with scattered villages and large-scale migrant labor outflow, Mengyin hosts 154,000 residents aged over 60, accounting for 26.73 percent of its total population, with a large number of left-behind, empty-nest and disabled elderly people in rural areas.

To address grassroots elderly care pain points, the county fully promotes the innovative “two-in-one” integration of township health centers and nursing homes. It embeds professional medical teams into daily elderly care, providing chronic disease management, rehabilitation physiotherapy and full-time life care for disabled and semi-disabled seniors. Up to now, Mengyin has built 10 medical-elderly integration institutions and become a provincial pilot for the “two-in-one”model, winning multiple provincial-level honors for elderly care innovation.

Beyond institutional care, Mengyin has improved the village-level elderly care network. A total of 118 rural happiness homes and 49 filial piety canteens have been put into operation, allowing elderly villagers to dine, communicate and entertain nearby. Professional rural care teams also provide regular door-to-door services including meal assistance, medical guidance and home nursing for home-based seniors.

As a typical practice of targeted livelihood governance, Mengyin's elderly care model effectively solves the difficulty of providing high-quality care in remote and scattered rural areas. Its exploration offers a replicable Linyi solution for rural elderly care transformation, providing valuable reference for aging governance in mountainous regions across China.

Editor：韩蒙蒙