It’s

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AARP Hawai‘i’s Volunteer State President Gary Simon and State Director Keali‘i Lopez

It’s Personal

They are fierce fighters, inspired advocates and understanding allies. For the team members at AARP Hawai‘i, their work is not just a job, it’s a passion—and quite often, it hits very close to home.

You’ll never understand it until it happens to you. For Gary Simon, who has decades of experience in health care, that is more than just a saying. A year after the volunteer state president of AARP Hawai‘i got married in 1994, his wife was forced to leave her job to care for her mother who suffered from dementia. When they moved

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in with her, they had no idea that they would spend the next 26 years as primary caregivers. “My wife compromised her pension, something she would have had if she had stayed in the office,” Simon says. “And now, she’s receiving a pittance.” Simon didn’t retire from his job in healthcare until 2019 so the couple is OK financially. “But not everyone is so lucky,” he says.

So when AARP Hawai‘i helped introduce the Kūpuna Caregivers program, Simon supported it. The program helps caregivers financially so they can find adult day care for their kūpuna and continue working. Simon can’t help but think how his wife could have benefited from such assistance back then.

“Caregiving is personal for me from caring for my mother-in-law and also seeing the struggles my wife went through,” Simon says. During his work as executive director at St. Francis Hospice, he also saw firsthand how important it is to care for those who provide care for others. “The caregiver is the pillar,” he says. “So many caregivers are beaten down because they don’t get enough sleep, lose their appetite or do not eat well.”

That is what fuels Simon’s tireless work as an advocate. “Elder care isn’t sexy,” he says. “It doesn’t get the dollars it deserves. It’s truly the dichotomy of an aging society. We have more and more elders in the nation, yet funding is static. It doesn’t increase. Every year, it’s a battle.”

AARP Hawai‘i State Director Keali‘i Lopez stands with Simon at the forefront of these battles. Like Simon, Lopez understands the issues in a very real way: She has been caring for her mother for the past three years. “After seeing the level of care my mother needs, I’m thinking more about my children and grandchildren and what they are going to need to do when it’s my turn to need care,” says Lopez. “This is why my work with AARP Hawai‘i is personal to me.”

She and her family spend anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 every month for her mother to receive comfortable care. Studies show that Hawai‘i families provide $3.1 billion in unpaid care each year and as they juggle duties that include preparing meals and assisting with medication, nationally 61% of caregivers continue to work outside the home.

Nationally, AARP supports a bipartisan bill called the Credit for Caring Act introduced in May 2021 that would provide a caregiving tax credit of $5,000 for eligible families.

“The concept is that there is a great deal of savings for the government as we are taking care of our mom and she’s not in a state facility,” Lopez says. “A tax credit like this would be invaluable for family caregivers.”

DRIVING DOWN DRUG PRICES

The price of caregiving is just one expense that can be difficult for local families. Last year, a friend who is a fellow executive council member confided in Simon that he had bladder cancer. The cost of the medicine to treat it was exorbitant.

“He had to choose to pay for his medicine, rent or food,” Simon says. “One of my friends had to make such a decision between life or death, basically.”

That’s why he’s also been passion-

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It’s Personal Continued

ately part of AARP Hawai‘i’s fight for fair drug prices. The nonprofit urged Congress to give Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. The organization launched a $4 million ad campaign calling out the trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America to demand fair drug prices and a cap on out-of-pocket costs. In Hawai‘i, AARP continued the battle by reaching out through social media, writing letters to the editor and calling on kūpuna to call their representatives and senators. “We want to make sure citizens of Hawai‘i understand this important issue,” Lopez says.

One of Lopez’s mother’s medications costs $1,100 every month. Thanks to Medicare, she only pays $70, but she knows that taxpayers pay the rest and worries about how the cost of Medicare is a burden to others. “AARP Hawai‘i is helping families care for loved ones without it being so challenging. Whether it’s a tax credit or reducing the cost of prescription drugs or being able to have someone continue working and know someone is caring for a loved one when they are at work, we are advocating for them,” says Lopez.

IT’S NOT ABOUT AGE

In addition to efforts in Congress, AARP Hawai‘i responds quickly when current events uncover troubling policies. The nonprofit discovered age discrimination within Hawai‘i’s Crisis Standards of Care Triage Allocation Framework—an emergency plan to ration health care when demand exceeds hospital capacities in disasters such as hurricanes and tsunamis, or a medical crisis like COVID-19. The plan stated that medical personnel could prioritize people age 64 and younger over those 65 and older if all other medical factors are equal.

“These are difficult decisions to make for medical personnel, but we saw clearly that this was age discrimination,” Lopez says. “It was a major concern for us and we felt it was something we had to address.”

AARP Hawai‘i immediately wrote a letter to Dr. Libby Char, the state health director, and Gov. David Ige urging the state to remove this discriminatory plan. The group also alerted the media and asked the Department of Health to make the care plan public. AARP Hawai‘i expects the plan to be revised.

“The truth of it is that there is bias every day toward age. We cannot change that overnight, but when such things come to our attention where it impacts many individuals, we are doing our best to defend our kūpuna,” says Lopez.

AARP Hawai‘i volunteer Robyn Bush teaches Zumba virtually to get people up and active.

JOINING THE MISSION

None of these fights to inform and inspire people would work without volunteers, the backbone of AARP Hawai‘i. Vicki Franco fell victim to fraud and decided to attend an AARP Hawai‘i workshop about scams. Soon, she wanted to empower other kūpuna. She signed up to volunteer and quickly became a volunteer leader.

One of the projects Franco leads is AARP Hawai‘i’s popular “Movies for Grownups.” Films are paired with an educational segment so viewers can

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learn as well as be entertained. “I really saw how people in the community trusted AARP Hawai‘i,” Franco says. “They believed we were a trusted friend and would come to us for information.” She also leads AARP’s work to engage veterans on O‘ahu and helped organize the 2021 Hawai‘i virtual Veterans Summit to connect veterans to important information and resources. When she had a difficult time finding hand sanitizer, toilet paper and disposable masks during the first months of the pandemic, Franco organized volunteers to put together 248 kits with supplies for homeless veterans. Her team also wrote personal Veterans Day thank you cards to residents at Tripler’s community living center. “We wanted to let vets know that AARP Hawai‘i believes in them and they weren’t forgotten,” she says. And, under her leadership AARP donated $6,500 to U.S. Vets to support homeless veterans and staged an online concert featuring Henry Kapono to

Volunteer

Help AARP Hawai‘i fight for, educate and engage kūpuna.

The jobs are big and small, and we need volunteers for them all! AARP Hawaiʻi is looking for volunteers who can plan and hold virtual and in-person events, tell our story through social media and help teach others how to go online. We are also looking for people who can write letters to the editor to advocate for needed programs and policy changes; share their personal stories with reporters and lawmakers; provide expertise on critical issues; and hold signs when we resume in-person events. Email us at hiaarp@aarp.org to get started.

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It’s Personal Continued

celebrate those who served.

But it’s not all work. Whether it’s picking movies or giving away shave ice and waffle dogs at member appreciation days, Franco is enjoying herself. “What’s the use of being retired if you can’t have fun?” she says.

That’s how Bev Parker got involved. She was struck by how much fun the volunteers were having at “Movies for Grownups” and decided to join once she retired. Prior to COVID-19, she was in charge of a team of community outreach volunteers who organized activities such as visits to botanical gardens or whale watching cruises. “Once the shutdown happened, we had to think about what we could do,” Parker says. She looked into Zoom meetings. “It was a way to keep in contact with people, which was more important than it ever was because people were feeling scared and isolated.”

Since then, she’s organized virtual sessions on tai chi, yoga, taiko drums, tours and much more. The most popular offering on Zoom is a Zumba Gold class, taught by Robyn Bush. Bush was born with a congenital lung problem. Doctors told her to exercise regularly to improve her health, and now she loves getting others up and active.

“One of the things I tell my Zumba class is you have to start moving before you lose your legs. Let’s get moving while you still have lots of different parts working!” she says. “I also like to tell them: I know where the fountain of youth is, but you can’t ride up to it in the elevator. You have to take the stairs!”

No Kūpuna Left Behind

Offering COVID-19 vaccinations was one thing. Getting them to those who needed the shots most was another. AARP Hawai‘i worked tirelessly with the government and nonprofits to make sure kūpuna who wanted to be vaccinated could be accommodated.

The announcement at the beginning of 2021 sounded promising: Vaccines are available to every senior who wants one. But soon it was clear to AARP Hawai‘i that certain communities were being neglected. While nursing homes were prioritized, smaller adult day care providers and community care homes were being overlooked. So were people in low-income housing and non-English speakers. Vaccine appointments were primarily online and many seniors either did not have access to the internet or did not know how to navigate it. So, Honolulu’s Elderly Affairs Division created the Kūpuna Vac-

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It was a multipronged effort where everyone worked together, from nonprofits to the state, to get our seniors vaccinated.

Craig Gima, communications director of AARP Hawai‘i. cination Outreach Group. And AARP Hawai‘i was involved from the start, working with more than 50 other organizations in health care, elder care, translation and language-access services, and communications. “AARP Hawai‘i has been an invaluable partner serving as co-lead of the Kūpuna Vaccination Outreach Group,” says Derrick Ariyoshi, EAD county executive with the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Community Services. “AARP’s advocacy, voice and collaboration were instrumental to our collective success.” The group of nonprofits had already proved it could make big changes. The Honolulu EAD spearheaded the Kūpuna Food Security Coalition to feed hungry seniors in 2020, early in the pandemic. It used the same model for vaccination efforts by identifying areas of need through its diverse network of nonprofits and kūpuna-centric organizations. Lanakila Meals on Wheels had already been delivering food to isolated seniors at home. Now, its volunteers helped the group locate and provide seniors with the necessary support to get vaccinated.

In just about a month, the city, state Executive Office on Aging, and the Hawai‘i Public Health Institute were coordinating on-site vaccinations at senior housing properties, adult day care centers and residential care homes. More than 1,000 kūpuna received the potentially lifesaving shots. “AARP Hawai‘i went to bat for us,” says Waynette Gaylord, president of the Alliance of Residential Care Administrators, which works on behalf of care homes.

Another initiative was the Kūpuna Call Center, which was a partnership with Aloha United Way and the St. Francis Healthcare System. The hotline helped register kūpuna for vaccination appointments over the phone, provided reminder calls, ensured people had transportation to appointments and followed up with wellness calls. At its peak, the hotline received more than 200 calls a day.

And, for those seniors who do not speak fluent English, AARP Hawai‘i reached out through newscasts, social media and television advertisements and flyers to ensure those in Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Thai and Filipino communities had the information they needed.

In record time, more than 90% of Hawai‘i’s kūpuna were vaccinated. Now, the group is working on distributing COVID-19 booster shots.

“Our philosophy was we didn’t want to leave anyone behind,” says Craig Gima, communications director of AARP Hawai‘i. “It was a multipronged effort where everyone worked together, from nonprofits to the state, to get our seniors vaccinated.”