Letter Submitted to the Editors of the Pacific Sun in Marin County, CA, on April 7, 2021
The Pacific Sun listed 385 voting categories for your “Vote! 2021 Best of Marin.”
Specifically, you have 28 categories to vote for under “Family.” In this category family members are listed as children and pets. What about the older folks that created the family to begin with? If you don’t consider elders part of the family category, I suggest a separate category of eldercare.
There is only one category which could specifically be correlated to older people and that is assisted living, which is under Health Care.
I am a fierce advocate for the older population and the very vulnerable elderly in our society. I am amazed and disappointed that 30 years after I began serving the older population, there is little to no value placed on this segment of our population, which is evidenced in your survey categories.
As the CEO and founder of a geriatric care management company, Aging Solutions, Inc., I see the trends toward recognizing which lives matter—and the older folks seem to be forgotten.
Most of the time, because of the work that we do to manage the care for elders, we see the systems writing people off because they’re old. That is evident in the health care systems, and I get it. However, I would like to see the Pacific Sun stand out as supportive and cognizant of the older population and their needs, and the fact that they also matter.
I have been thinking about preparing an awareness campaign at this point. There are many ways to do that, and I’d like to have a conversation about that, if you’re interested. Perhaps the Pacific Sun could think about these issues as well.
Terri Abelar, CEO
