Aging conference hopes to help plight of seniors

Thursday, July 7, 2005 | 9:58 a.m.

The effects of old age are something Las Vegas resident Patricia Serrano, 63, says she is just beginning to experience. But she sees what time can do to the human body every day as she cares for her aging mother.

Now 82, her mother lost a lot of mobility in recent years, and some of the medication that once helped her is no longer on the market, Serrano said during a break at the 2005 Nevada Conference of Aging at UNLV on Wednesday.

"I keep telling her, 'You're the boss, not your knees,' " Serrano said.

As her mother's primary caregiver, Serrano was attending the White House-sponsored conference to learn more about proposed solutions to improve transportation for seniors and access to affordable health care.

"I hope some of this gets going," Serrano said of the ideas being presented at the conference. "I'm my mother's transportation right now, but what happens when I can't drive?"

The best solutions to aging issues that are proposed at the Las Vegas conference and today's identical conference in Reno will be forwarded to the White House Conference on Aging in December in hopes of developing legislation that will help improve the lives of seniors, Tom Gallagher, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's delegate to the conference's policy committee, said.

Gallagher, who lost a bid for Congress against Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said he wants to help develop programs that will create opportunities for senior citizens to become more engaged in their society.

"Seniors are a tremendous national resource and we are on the dramatic edge of a major increase in that resource," Gallagher said.

Reid, D-Nev., kicked off the conference Wednesday with a keynote speech, remembering how his own mother struggled to make her Social Security check go further. If she hadn't had four sons to help her, she wouldn't have made it, Reid said of his mother.

"We are here to talk about solutions, rather than about problems. We know what the problems are," Reid said, addressing the need for more economic security and better health care for seniors.

Gov. Kenny Guinn, who also spoke at the conference, said the biggest challenge facing seniors is that the organizations trying to help them are "suffocating for resources." He sees a need for Nevada and the nation to look at its budget priorities in the future to start planning for the expected increase in adults over age 65.

"The baby boomers are coming," said Guinn, who turns 69 in August. "We are living longer and what all that adds up to is increased need for support in later years."

Many of the estimated 78 million Americans in the baby boomer generation will turn 60 in 2006 and the rest will in subsequent years. Adults age 65 or older are the fastest growing population in Clark County according to 2004 estimates from the state demographer's office, totalling about 183,000 people.

Adults age 55 and older total 350,900 people, or 20 percent of the total population in the county.

Conference attendees listened to presentations in Moyer Student Union from several senior service experts and the general public, then broke into workshop sessions to discuss those solutions, conference organizer Deanna Heller said. Heller serves as the vice chairwoman for the community advisory board to the UNR Sanford Center for Aging in Reno.

The Las Vegas attendees focused on the need to shift senior services to a more a community approach that would encourage independence as long as possible, as opposed to the current emphasis on institutionalizing older adults, Heller said.

The attendees also talked about the need to better educate service providers in the needs of older adults and to better educate seniors about what services are available.

Improving access to affordable health care and transportation, however, were the two biggest topics, Heller said.

Many of the proposed solutions are from programs already being put in place locally, such as Nevada's strategic plan to address senior needs or the Silver Sky Senior Housing project led by Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas.

The nonprofit housing project under construction in Summerlin is designed to provide affordable assisted care to seniors, Buckley and others said. Congress could help promote such projects on the national level by making it easier for nonprofit assisted living agencies to get priority funding for Medicare money for its services.

The goal of the conference is not just to pass on those ideas for use at the national level, but to implement the best ideas statewide, Heller and other conference attendees said.

"What I love about this is that it focuses on solutions, that is it focuses on how we can make a positive impact on their lives and help them grow older with dignity," Mark Nichols, executive director for the state chapter of the Nevada Association of Social Workers, said.