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Summit Aims to Prepare For an Aging Larimer County Population
By Kevin Duggan, The Coloradoan.com
January 23, 2010
Phil Stafford, director of the Center on Aging and Community at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, talks Friday during the Larimer County Summit on Aging. (V. Richard Haro/The Coloradoan)
The "silver tsunami" sweeping the world isn't going to skip Colorado or Larimer County.
In the coming decades, the state and county are expected to see a surge in the number of older residents as the baby-boomer generation ages, said Susanna Bozinovski, a human services consultant, during the first Larimer County Summit on Aging held Friday at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church.
By 2030, the number of Colorado residents who are 65 and older is expected to hit 1.2 million, or about three times what it was in 2000, she said.
"While many trends are uncertain, population aging is for certain - we know it's going to happen," Bozinovski said.
The summit presented by the Foundation on Aging for Larimer County attracted about 170 participants from government agencies and nonprofit organizations as well as the business community.
Participants learned about the issues related to aging in several areas, including housing, health care, transportation and support services.
The goal of the summit was to raise awareness about the issues and to start developing strategies to address them, said Bonnie Shetler, president of the foundation.
Larimer County is well-positioned to deal with an aging population because of the amount of resources it has available, she said. But planning and coordination will help meet future needs in a sustainable way.
“We as funders and nonprofit providers understand that we can no longer operate in isolation and hope to be successful,” Shetler said. “We need to enlist all sectors of the community in our search for solutions.”
Attitudes on aging should change, said the summit’s keynote speaker, Phil Stafford, director of the Center on Aging and Community at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community.
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