As America’s senior population continues to grow, the health and wellness services that many older adults rely on are in jeopardy as demands are starting to outpace the resources available.
Home-delivered meal programs, like the ones offered by the Northeast Iowa Area Agency on Aging (NEI3A), aim to effectively address aging challenges by promoting health and improving the quality of life for at-risk seniors. According to Vicki Hyke, NEI3A director of marketing and communications, these programs keep seniors healthy and independent at home, where they want to be, while also saving billions in tax dollars by serving as a substitute for more costly healthcare alternatives.
NEI3A serves 18 counties, including Dubuque and Delaware, with Dyersville benefiting from its services for over 40 years and the Senior Nutrition Program celebrating 50 years in 2022. In recognition of the Meals on Wheels “March for Meals” event, NEI3A recruited Dyersville Mayor Jeff Jacque to deliver meals to home-bound seniors in Dyersville.
Colleen Lawler, NEI3A aging nutrition specialist said, “Every March, we try to get some of our business and community leaders to go around and deliver meals to see who we’re serving and get a hands-on connection with some of the elderly folk.”
Jacque said, “I’m proud of the service this organization provides to the residents of Dyersville, and the struggle they encounter every week to provide that service.”
Lawler said the recognition of these leaders is beneficial, as NEI3A currently doesn’t have the funding it needs to meet the demand of seniors requesting to join their program.
“Our area does maintain a wait list right now for our home-delivered services because we don’t have enough funding,” she said. “When individuals call us, they fill out an assessment form and we prioritize them based on a scoring number that looks at whether they’re rural, if they live alone, and all of that. Those with the highest score get the priority when we’re able to add people. We don’t know where they’re from. We could have three people out of Dubuque County and one person in Marshall County.”
According to Janet Buls, NEI3A nutrition director, COVID-19 was the catalyst for the demand outpacing their funds. During this time, they received funding from the Family’s First Act, Cares Act and ARPA funding through the federal government and promoted giving meals to seniors to keep them in their homes. This added more people, but not as many monetary contributions to balance it.
“Our funding hasn’t kept pace with the need and increased costs that came along with the changes that occurred with supply shortages, wage increases and staffing concerns,” said Buls.
In addition to federal dollars, sources of funding come through state funds, community foundations and offering opportunities for people to contribute to the cost of their meals. While meals cost around $15 each, the current contributions from those who receive the meals range from $1.06 to $2 on the high end. Buls said many people mistakenly believe the meals to be free, but the lower funding has required them to downgrade their services from one hot meal delivered each day to one hot and four boxed frozen meals delivered once a week.
“I’d like to encourage people to think of this as a 60% discount. If the meal is $10, could you give us $3 or $4 for it? If we got that much for every meal we served, it would change everything we do today — we probably wouldn’t have a wait list in any form.”
Buls thanked Jacque and the Dyersville Area Community Foundation, which contributed $2,500 to the program. NEI3A is open for public donations at www.nei3a.org.
