Improving the delivery of health care and social services to culturally diverse elders
1994 – Founding members came together to produce a health information conference for older people in greater Boston inclusive of many racial, ethnic and linguistic groups. With a small grant from The Boston Foundation and the commitment of the original member agencies, the Coalition undertook to improve the environment in which health care is delivered to older people by increasing the knowledge about and sensitivity to cultural influences on health practices and health care delivery.
1995 Aging Well Together: A Multicultural Perspective on Caregiving Roxbury Community College, with 250 diverse seniors attending.
1996 Aging Well Together: An Asian Perspective on Caregiving took place at Tufts University with 325 attendees.
The Multicultural Coalition on Aging received the 1996 Hseih Award, from the Family/Culture promoting Asian/non-Asian collaboration.
1977 First conference for health care professionals, Cultures and Aging: Meeting the Challenges beyond the Year 2000, focused on the challenges and rewards of providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services to older adults.
Festival Latino de la Salud (Festival of Latino Health), four morning programs entirely in Spanish were presented to Latino seniors in Boston providing health screenings, exercise, nutrition, diabetes & heart disease prevention information, lunch and music.
1998 Aging Well Together Across Cultures: The Challenge of Change took place at Boston University. Presenting health information in eight languages concurrently through bilingual, bi-cultural professionals, including English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Khmer, Russian, Haitian Kreyol, Cape Verdean Creole.
2000 Roberta Rosenberg and Joanne Prince, co-chairs of the Multicultural Coalition on Aging, won the second annual Edward L. Cooper Award for Senior Advocacy from the City of Boston.
2000 Aging Well Together: In Mind, Body and Spirit took place at the University of Massachusetts/Boston: 8 languages
Coalition members hosted Harvard Medical School freshmen in a program entitled “the Social Context of Medical Care” to increase awareness of the influence of culture, language and socioeconomic status on health.
2001 Aging, Culture and Health: Creating a Culturally Integrated System, a conference for providers, brought together speakers from government and private sector to address the organizational challenges to providing culturally competent care to older adults of diverse cultures in our communities today.
The Coalition begins to be sought by others as a model. Presentations are made
at national meetings of associations such as the American Society on Aging/National Council on Aging. Articles on the value of the Coalition to its members are published in newsletters of the ASA.
2002 The Coalition takes a leadership role in the Boston Partnership for Older Adults, a citywide initiative to design and deliver a comprehensive and accessible system of community support for Boston’s older adults.
2003 Aging Well Together: Living Well Together takes place at Bentley College/Waltham, Mass, providing a program about caring for each other with informal & formal resources as we age in our multicultural community. Attended by 325 older adults, delivered in 11 languages, this conference addressed the broadest cultural spectrum yet.
2004 Roberta Rosenberg completes 10 years of inspired leadership. Marcie Freeman takes Chair. Coalition spends summer months engaged in facilitated Strategic Planning Process, completes Master Plan by October ’04.
2005 Coalition hosts Marie Smith, National President of AARP Coalition part of AoA grant to provide Medicare and Medicare eligibility and benefits information to limited English proficiency populations
2006Aging Well Together: Our Health is In Our Hands takes place at Tufts Health Plan in Watertown, MA. The curriculum focuses on chronic disease self- management and is delivered in 10 languages and dialects to over 280 older adults.
2007 Through a partnership with the American Red Cross, the first Joanne Prince Scholarship is awarded to student of color seeking CNA training.
2008 Aging Well Together: Our Health, Our Lives! takes place at Tufts Health Plan in Watertown, MA. The curriculum focuses heart and brain health, and health care benefits. The conference is delivered in 10 languages to over 325 older adults.
2008 The Coalition partners with the Administration on Aging and the Elder Services of Merrimack Valley, Inc. in the Massachusetts Senior Medicare Patrol Program todisseminate information about Medicare and Medicaid Errors, Fraud and Abuse to agencies serving linguistically diverse older adults.
