Name: Aging Asian Americans face high rates of social isolation and poverty
Uploaded: 2023-05-17
Duration: 5 min 16 s
Description: This group often lacks adequate support systems. But one New York City nonprofit is looking to change that—one meal at a time.

This group often lacks adequate support systems. But one New York City nonprofit is looking to change that—one meal at a time.

Aging Asian Americans face high rates of social isolation and poverty

Health

Older Asian American adults often lack adequate support systems despite facing high rates of poverty and social isolation.

Aging Asian Americans face high rates of social isolation

Older Asian Americans are disproportionately affected by social isolation and loneliness. Lots of resources are not going towards the specific demographic and population. And we wanted to do something about that. I come to you Asian American older adults are the fastest growing older adult population in the US for the Asian American population as a whole. What we've seen is the pervasiveness of the model minority stereotype. This societal belief that Asian Americans are well off. They're doing well. This extends to this idea that Asian Americans also don't experience health disparities. They don't experience poverty, which has resulted in less culturally and linguistically relevant services. Heart of Dinner is a nonprofit organization that counters food insecurity and isolation among Asian elderly who are living in severely under-resourced communities. What we do is we deliver care packages full of culturally thoughtful ingredients and meals to homebound Asian elders. The first inspiration of Heart of Dinner came about during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was during a time where we were experiencing xenophobia and racism against our Asian American community. And that's where we ended up doing a lot of research and understanding that there are so many Asian American older adults over 65 who do not have access to food security, to nutrition security, to having social connection. These stressors and factors are not new. They existed before the pandemic and they've only been exacerbated or worsened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrary to what many might believe there are high rates of Asian American older adults who live in poverty, who have fewer assets as compared to other immigrant groups. There's also high limited English proficiency among Asian American older adults. This has been implications for their ability to communicate with health care services. And I think the combination of these factors in tandem and over time impact health and well being for Asian American older adults, we just wanted to create an initiative that would speak and address all of those challenges. Each heart of dinner operation day will gather all the ingredients from one of our local independent restaurant partners. The volunteers come together start assembling and these are all packaged in a hand illustrated bag illustrated by thousands of volunteers worldwide. And after everything is combined and put together, we will then hand deliver it to each elder's door and make sure that they really receive that care package as love with heart of dinner. It's really important for us to be as thoughtful as possible and that means also respecting and understanding the cultural nuances. And it's so important for us, for example, with our handwrit notes that the notes are written in the mother tongue and the language is specific to each and every one of our elderly recipients. We first started in the heart of Chinatown New York. And from then on, it just grew from us operating out of our apartment to now four locations in Brooklyn Manhattan Queens. My hope is that we're able to expand our services to reach more elderly who are living in severely under-resourced communities. And it's so heartwarming, seeing the impact that her dinner has had on both our volunteer community, as well as our Asian elderly community. When we do express through, for example, heart of dinners, handwrit notes and artwork, how much we love them, how much we see them, we see them having smiles on their faces, they're opening the doors every single week. So excited to greet our volunteers who hand deliver these care packages to them. It's become a family that made them feel safe and feel loved and seen and dignified. Every single person deserves food security and deserve community.