RESOURCES:
Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels (YMOW)
TRANSCRIPTION:
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU. I'm Caroline MacGregor. And today, we are talking about the difficulty for many seniors in navigating high summer temperatures. With me today to talk about this issue and how all of us as a community can help address these concerns is Barbara Niess-May. She is the President and CEO of Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels. Welcome, Barbara!
Barbara Niess-May: Thank you for having me!
Caroline MacGregor: Too much heat is not safe for anyone, and an expected hot summer this year again. The risks for everyone are higher, but especially if you're older or you have health problems during the warm weather months. Many of our homebound seniors don't experience summers like other people do, and it's easy to forget this. What are some of the main difficulties that you see in seniors that you serve here in Washtenaw County when it comes to the summer months?
Barbara Niess-May: I would put it into two different buckets. One would be the social bucket and the other one would be the physical kind--how your body is responding--bucket. And let's start with the social bucket. Summertime in Michigan often means people getting together for backyard barbecues and getting outside and moving around and maybe going for more walks or spending time at a park. And for homebound seniors, they don't necessarily have that luxury. And they may not have transportation or they may not even be able to go out and sit on their front porch or sit in their driveway and enjoy a warm summer's day because of mobility and ability just to get out of their home. And so, in the winter time, we often get lots of questions of how can we support seniors in these winter months. And actually, there's a sense of solidarity, especially when people are homebound because of weather, there's like, "We know this. We're comfortable with this." And we just encourage people to make phone calls and check in on their older neighbors. We think the same in the summer months, particularly from a social isolation reducing standpoint. We encourage people that call on your senior neighbors or see if there's a way that you can safely help them sit outside or offer any kind of assistance. For example, they might have yard work that needs to be done that they can't do. And that can be very difficult, and they may not be able to afford to get the support. And so, they may need to rely on friends and others. I'd like to move at this point into the physical impacts. As we age, our ability to know what temperature our body is and to sweat changes, especially as we get older and also being able to sense dehydration. But dehydration has a growing exponential impact as we age as well. I mean, I'm in my mid fifties and I think about what I was like in my mid forties, and I think, "Oh my gosh! I have to be so focused on making sure I drink my water every day." And I could feel it by the end of the day if I haven't. And it just feels more pronounced at least for me. And as I've been reading the research, how older bodies operate in the heat is just very, very different than younger bodies. This kind of makes sense because as we think about aging, lots of things change. And as I am well aware, and as we talk to our clients, but those are the two premier errors, their ability to cool their own body, their sweat glands are different, and also dehydration becomes even more of an issue. In fact, 40% of heat-related illnesses that go into the ER in the state of Michigan are folks over the age of 60. And that's a huge chunk, especially if you're thinking that they may not be as active as people under 60.
Caroline MacGregor: So, with these hotter days, it sounds like it's definitely more difficult for the older people to regulate their temperature as they did when they were younger. Is this a general change or is it due to illnesses? Because a lot of people deal with more health concerns generally as they get older. If you have, for example, cardiovascular disease, this can also increase the risk of heat-related illnesses.
Barbara Niess-May: Yeah. I mean, there's the heart-related cardiac and stroke types of things. I think that if you just get sick, it might take longer to get better because it's harder to be comfortable enough to get the rest that you need to heal. My guess is that there's a whole host of other conditions that make it difficult. And also, if your heat-related illnesses often come with dizziness and unsteadiness for older adults, that is certainly a very important thing to be keeping an eye on because if they fall. And then, when we start talking about, as you age, your bones don't have the density they might've had when you were younger. So, I mean, it's just this compounding effect. And what Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels does is we're checking on people every day. We're checking to make sure that they have water. We're observing how hot or cold in the winter, of course, their living environment is. It's interesting. And then, also, the financial piece is that. We may have a client that has air conditioning, but they're not able to use it because they think it's too expensive, or it doesn't work well enough for what they would have to pay for, or they don't have AC at all.
Caroline MacGregor: I was just about to ask you about that, because sometimes, it's taken for granted by many of us that everyone has access to air conditioning, but that's not the case. And so, many seniors live in isolation. And more and more I'm hearing about this, that there's different dynamics in society today than we had before, and these people are even more at risk.
Barbara Niess-May: And our service area, Caroline, is the south side of Superior Township, to just north of Milan, to the county line, and to US 23. And one feature of that geographic area of Washtenaw County is that it's in the low to very low economic opportunity index. And how that plays out for the people that we serve is that their median income is below the federal poverty level, not 200% of poverty level. So, we're looking at folks that living in housing that's usually older stock or might not be as well-maintained, whether they own the home and they're not able to maintain it or they're in an apartment or a duplex or something like that or a small house and maybe the landlords aren't paying much in rent. And we're doing all that, and we know we're not meeting the needs of everybody that could use our service. And so, at Meals on Wheels, we do get a little bit of federal government funding. It's about 10% of our budget, and we're starting to get some of the millage funds. So, I feel like we're lucky that we're still in the budget. However, we recognize that we may need to be prepared to address that. But we do a lot of fundraising to make sure that we are able, because I think people are not familiar with our funding model. I think that they think we're completely government-funded or something like that. And we're on track to serve 130,000 meals this year in this area. And, yeah, that's a lot. And we also have supportive services that were born out of the need that was shared with us. If anybody wanted to go to our website, ymow.org, you'll learn about our Safe at Home program, our PEP program, and also, if anybody is interested, on July 11th, we're having a food truck rally right here in the parking lot of the church that we're serving and happy to have neighbors and friends come and be part of learning more and raising a little bit of money for those that we serve.
Caroline MacGregor: You have a tremendous mission, but a huge responsibility at the same time. What can we as a community do to help keep an eye out for our neighbors, especially during the summer months as you know, with the concerns. I mean, the heat is a concern for everyone now.
Barbara Niess-May: Absolutely! First of all, if you're part of a neighborhood association, get in touch with the leadership of that association and find out who might be homebound in your neighborhood, because we don't always know the people around us and especially the homebound, because you don't see them. So, you might not be like walking past or when you're out shoveling snow see them out there too. They're not doing that. And find out who they are and to see if they would like you to check in on them or help them set up a fan or two or something like that or help him access resources of sorts.
Caroline MacGregor: Just check on their well-being.
Barbara Niess-May: Yeah, just checking on their well-being, maybe taking them some cool drinks. Yeah, we've talked about a variety of things, their dehydration, body temperature, and...
Caroline MacGregor: And medications can also play a role, can't they, in how the body regulates itself too.
Barbara Niess-May: And when you're hotter, you're less likely to eat, and a lot of our folks have medication that they need to take with food. So, I mean, there's just all these different compounding effects. So, if you're interested in supporting, find out who they are if you can through a neighborhood association, or just try to observe where you think that somebody might be. Also, if you have older family members, if they live out of town, try to engage people around them to see if they can be checked in on or even calling and monitoring their weather and call them when it's especially warm or getting an alert when their weather is changing. And if you're still out of ideas by what I've said, certainly volunteering with Meals on Wheels and learning more about what we do, we can always use extra pairs of hands. Like, we have one person in particular. Kathy Wyatt is a great community activist and leader. And every year, she raises money to buy fans for us to put on the vans. And if we come across a home where it's just too hot, we give them a fan. I mean, it's that simple. We're not prepared to take 100 fans, but they're just little things that people can do to make a difference.
Caroline MacGregor: Absolutely. And I think with the growing sense of isolation in community as a whole, this is a perfect opportunity to reach out to your neighbors and check on those in need. All right. I've been speaking with Barbara Niess-May. She's the President and CEO of Ypsilanti Meals on Wheels. And we've been discussing seniors. And of course, during the summer, seniors are more at risk of heat-related illnesses. So, as a community, we hope to spread the message to do your part to keep an eye out for your senior neighbors. Thank you so much for joining me today, Barbara!
Barbara Niess-May: Thank you for having me!
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU FM Ypsilanti.
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