Last Friday, NHCOA President and CEO, Dr. Yanira Cruz, participated in a panel discussion regarding food insecurity among older Americans– particularly Hispanic seniors– at Latino Magazine’s No Más Hambre (No More Hunger) Summit in Washington, DC. The Summit kicked off with a startling fact: 26.2% of Latino households face food insecurity.
This includes households with children and older adults. In fact, 9 million older adults experience hunger on a daily basis. In addition to the issue of hunger, seniors face other challenges when they don’t have access to food: medications that need to be taken with food cause side effects when they are taken without a meal, seniors that don’t consume nutritional meals are more likely to become weak, get sick and potentially develop a chronic condition.
During the panel discussion, Dr. Cruz spoke of a Miami senior she met during NHCOA’s open forum at the Promoting Communities of Success meeting in South Florida. This Miami resident has diabetes and spoke of her struggle to manage her health. She told Dr. Cruz that managing her health is made even more difficult because she can’t afford the food she needs. It’s common that food insecurities (limited access to adequate food caused by a lack of money and other resources) are often paired with other unfortunate social issues in our society. For example, older adults that experience food insecurity also have trouble with access to proper health care. Additionally, those with food insecurities also suffer from isolation from the community and are often too proud or too embarrassed to apply for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
Food assistance is available through SNAP, but the panel brought up problems and more questions when the discussion turned to SNAP benefits: How do you get older adults to sign up for SNAP? What if older adults don’t feel they present a great enough need to quality for SNAP? What if they are too proud or too embarrassed to admit that they need help buying food? What if they are scared to take part in a government program? Are language barrier causing older adults to shy away from filling out paperwork to get benefits?
Although the panel discussed challenges and unfortunate realities about the Hispanic community and hunger, there is hope: hunger is a problem that can be solved. Join No Mas Hambre’s efforts to help those in our community who go to bed hungry. Help a senior that you know is in need apply for SNAP benefits. Support NHCOA’s mission to help seniors, families and caregivers by making a donation. Join us as we empower communities to help solve the issue of food insecurity.
