- Funding for this program was provided by the Mary E Bivins Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- How would you describe senior food insecurity in one word?

- "Not" that's the one word.

It's not a problem until it happens to you.

- One in six seniors in the United States are food insecure, meaning they don't have reliable access to nutritious, healthy - Food.

These organizations say senior citizens in the Amarillo area often face food insecurity.

- We rank among the lowest for food security in our senior population.

- Since our seniors are having to choose between purchasing food and purchasing their desperately needed medications, - One in five individuals in the next five to six years will be 65 or older.

- And make sure that people understand that this is a significant issue in our country and it's not going away.

- I think it's fine for organizations to say We want to end hunger in this area.

I think everybody knows what that means.

Saying we wanna end food insecurity in the area.

Then like, well, what exactly is that?

My name is Craig Gunderson.

I'm the Snee Family Endowed Chair at Baylor University in the Department of Economics, - Food insecurity is maybe a little confusing.

We're used to hearing the word hunger.

Hunger is a physical sensation of lacking food in your stomach.

Food insecurity is a little bit deeper - To be very basic about if somebody doesn't have enough food at some time over the past year due to financial constraints, we would consider them to be food insecure.

- We don't measure hunger because if we were to measure hunger, we were to survey everybody in the room.

Everybody would say, yes, I've experienced hunger in the last day or the last week.

Just because you've experienced hunger doesn't mean you're experiencing food security.

- So if you look at this recent inflation that occurred in 2022 and 2023, which led to very large increases in food insecurity in the United States in particular, seniors saw these increases in food insecurity.

- According to Feeding America, senior citizens are the fastest growing food insecure population in the United States.

- Rising food insecurity during the pandemic has impacted a lot of people, especially our seniors.

- Data shows more than 3 million US seniors reported sometimes or often not having enough to eat.

- When we first started this work, I don't think there was anyone who really knew the number of older adults in the Texas panhandle who were experiencing hunger and food insecurity.

- One of the biggest challenges for the Texas panhandle is just how large it is in terms of the area that you have.

So many people spread out over roughly 30,000 square miles, but that's spread out over a very, very large area.

It's very challenging.

Then when you have food insecurity and you're trying to reach all those food insecure people over a very large, large region, - Anywhere between 10,000 to 15,000 older adults in the Texas panhandle are experiencing hunger and food insecurity.

- For me, for a long time, it was a number and it was honestly easy to not do anything about a number.

'cause a number doesn't have a face, a number doesn't have a story.

It's just something that takes up space on a spreadsheet.

- I'm Zach Wilson.

I'm the executive director with the High Plains Food Bank.

The most eye-opening part to me.

We actually spoke more with the individual who said that, you know, she hadn't had a a blueberry and, and in a long time and, and she explained her story and all of a sudden it makes sense.

It was a food access barrier.

It was a transportation barrier.

It was, you know, her family status.

She was the only one in her family that that was, that was still alive.

The problem is, is is growing, you know, in, in our area.

- I went out on some community meetings and, and tried to ask that question, how many older adults in your community are experiencing this issue?

And by large the answer was, I don't know.

Or we don't know.

- So my name is Alan Kester and I'm the founder of Heal the City.

- Heal the City is continuing to grow and looking forward to changing lives.

Uninsured patients are seen at no cost.

The clinic manages acute care, chronic care, dental care and more.

- When we started, I didn't recognize that a lot of our patients really didn't have access to food.

In fact, about two thirds of our patients at some point during the month, didn't have enough food in their home to eat.

- One of the key determinants of food insecurity in the United States are food prices, - $7 for eggs, eight for bacon.

Food costs are rising.

- Food prices continue to outpace inflation increasing by 28%.

Since 2019, - The cost of eggs is expected to go up 40% this year.

- We have a nutrition class here every Thursdays, and we talk about they have to eat salmon, they have to eat fish, they have to eat fruits, but fruits, vegetables like good food is expensive - And diet is important and can further complicate issues like food insecurity for elderly people.

- Food insecurity is not just about having the money to buy food, but also some of our seniors that experience food insecurity is lack of transportation - And bus service is not sometimes available at the time.

Those people need to go to buy their groceries.

- A lot of the people that use public transportation, they have to walk - And we know that seniors have higher rates of disability across many different dimensions.

- Those factors start to add up and all of a sudden you have a person in need.

- Think about the stress that they take with them to bed at night.

You have to acknowledge there's a challenge first, and then solutions come later.

- We have a, a whole generation that is moving into that age group.

- Nobody else seems to care about what can we do to help them - Out.

They seem to be a, a forgotten demographic.

- At Catholic Charities.

At the Interfaith Hunger Project, we worked with several organizations who were focused on feeding kiddos.

People were passionate, I mean, would volunteer their whole day to helping those kiddos and you know, making sure that their snacks were packed up and that their meals were coordinated.

But then it was almost a struggle to get people to focus, refocus on senior hunger - 'cause we've all been kids.

Maybe we all went hungry one day.

So we have some context that we can go back to and recognize and appreciate and understand that situation a little bit more.

We have such a hard time understanding what older adults are experiencing.

It's because we ourselves have not been an older adult.

- I think it's because I am so young.

I I I see the old, old and find them.

So unrelatable, - Did you have forks or knives in the old - Days?

Forks and knives, yeah.

Oh sure.

- And so it's really hard for us to put ourselves in their shoes when we haven't been there and have no context for that.

- And then there's self-esteem and self-respect and, and self-worth.

Many of the senior - Adults are very proud and they don't, they don't wanna take a handout even though they're probably the most deserving.

- When we interview patients, nobody wants to admit, none of my adult patients want to admit that they don't have the resources to buy food.

There's a shame involved in that.

- Many of our older adults in the Texas panhandle who are struggling with hunger and food insecurity are doing so silently.

Right.

They are quietly suffering - And that's another challenge with our senior adults is it's hard to find out that they're struggling.

- Do you want first and last name?

- Yes ma'am.

- Brenda Preston.

I am 77 years old and my husband is 90.

We'll be 91 this week.

So - How long have the two of you been married?

- 48 years.

I was living in Guyman was on the verge of a divorce and I needed a job very badly that could support my daughter and I, I went to the Amarillo College truck driving class and my husband, he was teaching his first class.

He allowed me to get in even though I was a week late in registering.

And I went through the class and after my husband and I got together, which was not during the school, lemme clarify that.

Yeah, thanks to that I went on to be the first woman truck driver in the Safeway stores in Amarillo.

Then after my husband and I got together, we were going from coast to coast delivering air airplane engines.

I retired, he tried to retire and just, that was not for him.

He just couldn't stay at home and he'd been a truck driver his whole life when he was 85.

He took a fall and was injured.

Not terribly, but he was injured and we decided that he needed to, to do something besides truck driving and started living on social security.

I wish I could say it, that it was wonderful and we get along just fine, but, so we had our house auctioned and the content's auctioned.

We saved a few things and had to rely on some amazing people to get us through it because neither one of us was physically able to pick up boxes and go do what needed to be done.

With the money that we got for the house, we bought an RV and paid off what we owed.

Our kids used to, well, grandkids and anybody really used to come to us to help them out.

Well, my kids are paying part of my bills and I just hate to think that they are gonna have to take care of me one of these days if something happens to our social security, because that's the only income we have.

- A lot of our seniors have tried to make good decisions.

They've tried to be good savers through their career, and they've gotten to this season where they thought, oh, I've got enough, it's gonna be fine.

And then all of a sudden cost of living rises their whatever was in their pension or whatever their, you know, retirement.

It's just not enough to make ends meet.

If - Somebody is 35 and they face a serious financial shock, is he or she oftentimes can go and work somewhere and make up for that large decline in income.

Okay.

If somebody's 75, yeah, some of them are, many of them are still in the workforce, either by choice or not by choice, but a lot of them really are outta the workforce and there's not really that response that they can make.

So they face that constraint that many other younger people do not face.

Fixed income, - Fixed income, - Fixed income, their income is fixed.

- The key to a happy retirement is simple.

All you need is at least three streams of fixed income allocated as follows, 40% devoted to savings and investments, 30% devoted to pensions and another 30% devoted - To social security.

- It's surprising that a lot of the folks that we serve and have on our services are, are those people who have worked all of their lives, who have done everything that, you know, I think people would say that you're supposed to do, but still aren't able to make ends meet for whatever reason.

So in the - Texas panhandle, we have the top 26 counties and kind of central in that.

We have Potter and Randall County, you know, and Amarillo is between both.

Some of Amarillo is and Potter County and some of it is in Randall.

And so there are still places of pottery and Randall County that are rural, but by and large we consider Amarillo to be kind of the city and then the other 24 counties outside of that to be rural.

- If you take say south parts of Amarillo and Canyon and stuff like that, you know, there's more affluence there, things are going pretty well.

- If you even just look at pottery and Randall County, Randall County is often wealthier in terms of the, the data and the research.

If you look at the United Way of Amarillo and Canyon's, community impact report, often you'll see that Randall County has better outcomes than Potter County.

And so there is a big distinction between pottery and Randall in and of itself.

- Randall County, it, it is a higher income county when you get closer to Canyon, but Randall County goes all the way into 45th and Amarillo.

So you also pick up two low income housing units.

You've, I mean there's a, a very diverse economic system there.

- My name is Glenn Baus, I'm the director of the market on Tier Blanca Randall County's only full service food pantry.

- Was there ever any pushback from anybody who felt like a place like the market didn't need to exist in Randall County?

- Well, we still get that on occasion.

- I think that there's pushback for organizations that are working to address hunger and food insecurity in many of the communities because individuals don't see the need.

And when you don't see the need, there's no reason to support an effort.

- Feeding America came out with some stats that Randall County, 11.3% of the population was food insecure.

You know, given the size of Randall County, it's a sizable population, 15 to 20,000 people.

We have found that just in the last year alone, that has increased from 11.3% to 13.9%.

So we knew there was a need.

- My son's school let me know that they existed and that they would be more than happy to help us because he and I were in an, in a, we were homeless and living with family members and different friends and having a hard time coming up with food.

- We often have to think about children and we think about seniors as being the sympathetic food insecure.

Okay, that 55-year-old man who's kind of, in many ways lonely and everything, nobody thinks about him being this or oftentimes, you know, nobody thinks about the 53-year-old woman who for, you know, for the first time in life her kids are outta the house.

But she's, she's struggling financially over many different dimensions.

- A lot of the programs in this area, you have to be at least 65 or you have to have school aged children.

But if you're 50 and your kids are grown and gone, you have no help.

- Really, our definition of an older adult goes back to the older Americans Act of 1965.

- So the Older Americans Act is a piece of federal legislation that was signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

And what it did was it created a framework for specific services to help keep older adults aging in place or as I like to say, in their own homes for as long as possible.

- Some people count that as 65 plus.

Some people say 62 plus, some people say 60 plus, - But that 50 to 59 age group has substantially higher rates of food insecurity than the 60 plus group.

And I think it's for a, for a number of different reasons.

You can't get social security until you're at minimum 62 and therefore you don't have that social safety net.

Similarly with Medicare can't get Medicare until it's what, 65 or whatever.

You don't have that social safety net.

On the other hand, a lot of the social safety nets that people have when they were in the, we were raising children, those to some extent are no longer quite, quite as present.

I mean, snap is still there, but there's different rules in terms of with and without children.

- At 53, I still have a 15-year-old, so I have a little bit of leeway.

I do get food stamps.

It's just very limited.

- Another factor facing this group is that there's been a, a large increase in multi-generational households.

- A quarter of Americans, 25 to 34 reported living in a multi-generational household in 2021 up from 9% 50 years ago.

- We have two or 3000 kids in Amarillo being raised by their grandparents or great-grandparents.

- And some of those multi-generational households will be headed up by somebody who is 65 or or older.

But a lot are coming to that 50 to 59 age group.

- My 15-year-old, as amazing as he is, and as much as I love him, he is adopted.

- And these are oftentimes multi-generational families whereby it was not like, oh, we had planned this entire time, is my daughter was gonna move in with me with her kids when I became 55?

No.

What this oftentimes is, is the daughter is struggling, the daughter may not even be present in the children's lives, and then the grandmother is taking things over.

The grandparent, - A a grandmother who lived in one of our communities here in the Texas panhandle, pulled up to one of our mobile food pantries and she had children in the back and she said, you know, thank you very much for, you know, for this help.

I'm now the legal guardian of my grandchildren and my husband just recently passed away.

And so I didn't know what I was going to do to make, to make ends meet.

And 'cause now I'm pretty much a parent again, - Remember earlier I was talking about people who are, you know, 75 years of age and they may struggle to get a job 'cause they've been outta labor force.

Those in that 50 to 59 age group, you know, if they lose their jobs, it's really, really hard to get another job that pays as well as what it was previously.

- Half of American workers older than 40, say they faced age discrimination and 27% say they were denied a job because of their age.

- People think that in order to be food insecure, it means that you don't work.

That's simply not true.

The majority of people who turn to us for help have at least one job, sometimes more than one.

- I've been a, I've worked a lot of different jobs my whole life.

I've, I usually try to one full-time job and two or three part-time jobs at the same time.

So I've worked up to four jobs at a time.

So working hard was not the issue.

I had two surgeries where our apartment complex evicted us during that time.

- What's the leading predictor of food insecure United States?

It's disability status.

- We have a lot of disabled people for one reason or another here in the panhandle of Texas.

- All of their money is going to take care of healthcare.

So they're having a hard time.

And so when, when they have a a tragedy, they, they're not prepared for that.

- I mean, I had one surgery on January 10th and one surgery on January 24th, one of them being an open eye procedure.

So I couldn't very well see, but I was required to move outta my apartment the day after my surgery.

So that's how we ended up with not having a place to live.

- When they did the community health survey, what they found was that the number one health issue in our community was not diabetes.

It wasn't hypertension, it wasn't obesity, it was behavioral health.

And behavioral health means different things to different people.

So what I would say in general, for us, it tends to have the overlaps of depression, anxiety, sometimes trauma.

PS PTSD, - When my family would be without food growing up, my mom would get really, really anxious and depressed.

And so I've tried to stay away from that knowing what I've seen as a kid so that my son doesn't see it.

So he doesn't realize I, when we were homeless, he thought we were camping out, he thought we were camping out and having a good time.

He didn't know the difference.

So I try to make sure that my son doesn't know and doesn't experience the anxieties that I did growing up.

- I talk a lot about loneliness a lot.

I talk a lot about mental health challenges and those things go together and I think that's really especially important for seniors.

- So you're not surprised that the latest numbers show that 25% of healthcare for seniors and older adults is spent on mental healthcare?

- Right.

It doesn't surprise me at all.

Yeah, no, no.

And I would've, yeah, and that's, you know, that's just gonna increase over time.

- Most of us like to think that we're proactive, we're thinking about the future, what's gonna happen, you know, maybe next month and six months in a year maybe we think about, you know, our retirement, whatever, that's gonna be the long play.

But when things get tight, when trouble comes, when resources aren't available, what tends to happen is people go into what I call chaos mode.

- You can't think, you can't focus, you can't work, you can't learn, you can't begin to get organized because food is something you gotta have every day.

It doesn't take a holiday, it doesn't take a vacation, it doesn't take a weekend off.

And so without food and consistency, it's chaos.

- When you don't know where your next meal is coming from or where your child's next meal is coming from, I think that that cause a lot of causes, a lot of anxiousness and, and our world has come to an anxious society for a lot of these reasons.

Yeah, it was just hospitalized as little as four weeks ago for anxiety and a heart rate, an extensive heart rate.

- According to BMC, public health researchers studied the connection between food insecurity and mental health.

During the pandemic, they found that food insecurity nearly tripled the risk of anxiety and caused a two and a half times higher risk of depression.

- In fact, PTSD is the big one because you can imagine not having food for yourself or your family is almost like having a trauma.

- I do think it can be really discouraging when you look at the reality of what hunger and food insecurity among older adults looks like.

You know, when you hear stories of individuals who are literally training their bodies to eat less and less and less and less and ultimately going hungry, that hurts.

You know, when you hear stories about older adults who are so hungry that they are digging in dumpsters to try to get their next meal, that's really discouraging.

That's really - Hard.

I met a girl here that goes to my church and it was totally unexpected for both of us to see someone that you knew coming to the food bank.

And at first I thought, oh, somebody else is here besides me.

And she's not a senior, but she has kids.

There are places that will help, you know, they will jump right in and and help you out and all you have to do is ask.

But sometimes that's hard for people to do as well.

- It's too much for any one person to take care of.

And I think it's where a lot of people do get frustrated.

This is so big, I can't even do anything about it.

Oh, when you talk about rural, it, it, it is even worse.

- The rural communities, our rural 24 counties have different challenges than, than pottery and Randall County are two here.

- Not to say that the urban and suburban communities don't have challenges to, they do, but they're more pronounced in a rural setting like the Texas panhandle.

- There's a lot of challenges that faces rural Texas and really rural West Texas and the Texas panhandle.

You know, if you go drive around the Texas panhandle and you see how wide open it is, people are proud of their independence here.

Going back to when this area was first settled, in order to make it out here, you, you really had to just rely on yourself.

- Many of the senior adults are very proud and they don't, they don't wanna take a handout even though they're probably the most deserving.

And that's another challenge with our senior adults.

It's hard to find out that they're struggling.

- They are quietly suffering.

And you combine that with transportation issues, all of a sudden you have someone who really can't access food.

- Problem is, we just don't have the resources that an Amarillo, a Dallas or Wichita Falls a Lubbock has.

And so that's the challenge, - Frankly.

I think it's gonna be very difficult to overcome those challenges.

- One of the biggest challenges for the Texas panhandle is just how large it is and just how rural it is in terms of the area that you have so many people spread out over, - You know, 24 of our 26 counties are extremely rural, some of which are considered frontier even.

And so there are some unique challenges in the Texas panhandle that you don't see in other places like cities like Dallas or Houston or San Antonio.

- And rural hunger definitely differs in many ways versus urban hunger.

- 'cause you're just, you're trying to get access, right.

And that getting access is, is just fundamentally a harder problem when you are, especially in a, in a rural place, - You know, our smallest county is Roberts County and there are more cattle than people in Roberts County, - A lot of our rural communities.

You have seniors out there that are either caring for children, caring for grandchildren on top of what they are facing on a daily basis with limited and fixed incomes is, is really what brought it forward to me is like we've, we've got to, you know, really focus a lot more on, on our seniors.

And I think it was amplified even more so by the pandemic.

- The state of Texas is sending medical supplies and personnel to Amarillo and Lubbock this weekend.

It's an effort to help tackle a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

- You know, the pandemic had a, a real obvious way of unveiling the vulnerable populations.

- The High Plains food bank was working with those counties to make food available to the individuals that were under a quarantine type situation.

And they hadn't recognized that we have seniors that did not have the groceries.

They needed to adequately have food security.

- You can't really go door to door and ask questions in a town of 400 because then people aren't able to maintain their privacy.

We don't want hungry, older adults to stay hidden, but we also don't want to force them out and, and call them out in any kind of way.

So when you look at data, you have to have enough individuals that there's privacy.

And in rural communities that's really challenging.

There are communities in there, cities that have less than 400 people throughout the Texas panhandle.

- This is gonna go to, these are all hot items.

My name is Kay Calvert and I'm with Tri-County Meals here in Quitaque, Texas.

We just started with home bound delivered meals and then a couple years ago we started working on the new food pantry building when we first started.

That's the first thing that they'd say is, oh, we don't need those.

We don't need a program like that.

It's a wonderful idea, but we don't need a program like that.

We take care of our neighbors.

Well, it didn't take long.

We found out we really don't take care of our neighbors.

I mean, you have to seek some of them out and then you hear their story.

- And will you tell me where you grew up - Here in Turkey, Texas?

I was born and raised here, went to school and I worked at the bank for many years and raised a child.

Oh, we had three grocery stores.

We had two or three gasoline stations.

We had a bakery.

My dad was a barber.

We had two cafes and I a a dry cleaner.

I mean, this was uptown when I was young, but a lot of - Rural areas, it, it is emptying out is you don't have, and you have the average age in a lot of rural areas is becoming older and older - People is leaving and they kids don't ever come back.

They go to the city and - They never come back - Just to visit.

Well, since this data shows more people are moving to the Lone Star state than any other state in the US Close to half a million people moved to Texas since July of 2021.

It's now home to 30 million people second only to California.

- But I do know our school sizes are shrinking.

They're estimating within the next five years we will, we will no longer be a two a district, but a one a district.

So yes, the numbers of kids are down.

- For many younger individuals, there's a lack of opportunity.

And so you ha you don't have the infrastructure that is available and offers all sorts of different resources.

If you have a vibrant community, - Kids are leaving because there are not jobs for them there.

And that leaves that older population in place.

- If they go off to college and they, they're, you know, more white collar, they, they have to move to where there's jobs.

Even blue collar jobs.

There's just not a lot here.

We have migrant workers in the farms and we have some large family farms, but for the most part, there's just not a lot of options here.

- Sometimes the younger people, that's the only people that some of these home bound people even see - In the grocery store stay open till like nine o'clock.

So if we wanted pop or candy, we could go over there and get it.

- And it's not like that today?

- No, we got a Allsup's, that's all we've got.

- Oh, when you talk about rural, we have what we call food deserts and that's where people can't even go into or find a grocery store within driving distance.

- You know, I run outta something that I need.

I can, well I can drive to Allsup's, but I'm not supposed to be driving.

And the, the closest grocery store is 10 miles.

So it's hard sometimes to get what I need.

- Let's say somebody that, that lived in Skelly Town, their options are to drive to Pampa or to drive to border.

And it's, you know, 15, 18 miles.

Either way that they would go.

- New data from the American Cancer Society says simply having access to healthy foods can mean a longer life, but without it, - What we found was that the life expectancy was shortest in the so-called food deserts.

- We have to begin thinking about a food desert.

From my perspective at the individual level.

For somebody with a car who is 45 years old, has been driving for a long time and is comfortable, he or she might not ha mind having the nearest food store be five miles away.

Similarly situated senior who doesn't feel comfortable driving may find that that five miles is way too far away.

Heck, that senior may even find that a mile away would be too far away.

- Almost half the census tracks in the Texas panhandle are considered food deserts.

And so if you have a food desert and you combine that with transportation issues, - Now they're worried about how they're gonna put food on the table.

- I don't see it getting any better.

I see it getting worse.

I see us having to spend more money on the pantry items that we're having to purchase - Big time.

Supermarkets have a tendency to hurt small, small town businesses.

And that's again, a struggle.

That's what makes Memphis kind of like an island, is it's hard to compete with those big large grocery store chains.

We, we do have a grocery store.

It's, it's Davis Thriftway Thriftway.

The Thriftway tries to stay competitive pricing wise, but there's just some things they can't.

And so they're buying, you know, higher price goods.

It's just the reality of it.

- Customers at the store I spoke with told me rural grocers are a must have despite those bigger city stores - During the wintertime, if we didn't have a store here and there's a big storm mountain, you needed things, you're outta luck.

This store here is a lifesaver when it comes to bad storms.

You can't go nowhere If you have to, you can walk down to the store, get the things you need, you know, until they get the roads open, the trucks come in and stuff.

So during the wintertime is the most important.

- The irony for many rural communities is that they are surrounded by farmland that's growing fresh food.

There's just no access to it.

- Well, I am a diabetic and I have a heart problem and I can't walk.

There's something wrong with this right leg and I have no balance.

So I am in constant pain.

- If you needed to go to the hospital, how would you do that?

- Well, I called the, the fire department an ambulance and they couldn't get me.

- And where would they take you?

- I go to Lochte.

- How far is that from here?

- Good hour.

- So if you have a serious health issue, you can expect that it's gonna take over an hour for you to get any kind of treatment or help.

- Yes sir.

- Memphis no longer has a hospital.

So the closest real healthcare we have is Children's Regional Medical Center.

It's 30 minutes away.

- Keys in what we call a healthcare desert desert, which is Hall County.

Memphis is in Hall County.

There are no healthcare providers in that entire county.

Not a nurse practitioner.

There's not a pharmacy.

Obviously that's a very vulnerable part of the state of the Texas panhandle.

- One of the things Hall County had to do was really strengthen our EMS Hospi Hospital services or getting people to care as quickly as possible.

- Rural ambulance service is in its own emergency.

According to a study from the Rural Policy Institute, it found long distances and challenging terrain prolong emergency response times.

There's not enough money to make ambulance service viable.

And there's a lack of regional EMS plans to coordinate services.

- We see a lot of people that drive 30 minutes at a minimum to just see their primary healthcare provider.

And if he identifies a problem that they have and needs to send them to a specialist, most of those specialists are here in Amarillo.

And so if you're talking about driving from Perton to Amarillo, you're talking two hours.

- Some of the seniors are relocating just because their children are in metropolitan areas like Dallas, Amarillo.

So they're forced to, because their health comes, it gets to a point where they just can't take for care of themselves.

- And Texas panhandle wide, our healthcare costs are really high.

That is definitely a topic that is out there.

Healthcare costs are high.

- Northwest Texas Healthcare System has released a statement regarding a series of layoffs at its facility.

The hospital is restructuring certain functional areas and departments within Northwest Texas healthcare system to increase operational efficiencies and reduce costs during this challenging time in the healthcare industry.

- The fundamental assumption of economics is scarcity.

There's a reality of, there's just a scarce amount of resources.

And so we're just trying to all do the best we can to make the best we can of this scare of these scarce resources, whether it's healthcare or food.

- If you start at one end of the spectrum saying, let's say with preventative healthcare, if you don't have a, just even a clinic or a pharmacy that you can go to and get a pneumonia vaccine, then you're put you at risk of being hospitalized with influenza pneumonia or pneumococcal pneumonia or COVID or any of those things.

- It's very hard.

I live on social security and it's hard to stretch it, but I somehow God helps me.

I don't advise anybody to get a divorce because a single mom is, it's so very hard 'cause you've got to feed the kids.

When I was 40, she graduated from high school.

My daughter, she helped me so much, you don't know.

And she helped other people.

She was one of those that she was there and yet people find out, even know, but she was there to help anybody.

I know she took in a little boy one time in high school.

He d he's a single ma.

He had a single mom.

They didn't have the money to buy senior rings or invitations.

My daughter did it.

I mean, I'm not bragging about it, I'm just saying she took him on because she knew he didn't have no, nobody else.

And she would never want me to tell that.

But - How long ago did she pass away?

- Four years.

And I got real depressed and I may cry, I just missed her.

And I was, went into a deep depression.

But I'm much better now.

I still cry.

It's just a love, you know, to live out here like I'm doing.

It isn't easy because of trica meals, the food bank, my hospice volunteers.

That's the way I make it every day.

And my Lord, - You have to listen.

And listening is so important because unless we hear the stories and unless we understand how people got here, then there's not a, there's not a way to come up with a solution.

You don't understand the problem, I think when it hit home the most for me was when I was sitting in a room with one of our patients who was in our chronic care program.

They were a diabetic patient and I was asking them about their blood sugar and I said, Hey, how's it going with your diabetes control?

And he said, well, my sugars are kind of up and down doc.

And I said, well, are you taking your insulin?

And he said, well, no, not all the time.

And immediately the response is I'm like, well, why not?

We're we're getting this medicine for you.

Why are you not taking it?

And he looked at me and he said, you know, doc, I don't take my insulin if I'm not sure I'm gonna have enough food to eat that day.

And so that, that sort of hit hard because the danger of him taking insulin without having food is that he could bottom his blood sugars out.

He could go into a, a hypoglycemic coma.

And so he'd crafted sort of how he would address his healthcare needs around sort of his access to food and whether or not he knew he gonna have access.

- The thing is that not just buying food in general is nutritious food.

- Recognizing and understanding that food is a key component to managing so many health issues.

You know, you talk about diabetes and hypertension and some of those things.

Food is a key component to managing those illnesses, those chronic diseases.

- Type two diabetes has all sorts of awful things that can happen after you contract the disease like neuropathy and peripheral neuropathy.

That means that you lose the feeling in your feet in what we call protective sensation.

And protective sensation means that like when you touch something hot, you immediately reflex away.

Or if you step on something sharp, you immediately feel it.

And you, you, you can, you protect yourself that way.

- You know, fruits, vegetables, like good food, it's expensive.

So sometimes they just buy whatever they can.

- So people with food insecurity tend to lean towards the foods that are not recommended.

The processed foods, the packaged foods high in, you know, sodium high in, in triglycerides, not a lot of fresh food.

So not only do they get higher incidences of those diabetes, hypertension, but they can also develop vitamin deficiencies as a result of the types of foods that they're eating.

- You know, how many times have I seen people who have type two diabetes who are construction workers and they just step on a nail and they can't feel it and they end up losing their job at the minimum because they're out for two months or they lose their life or their leg because of, you know, that type of injury.

- Those are big, big killers up in our area because they're not found until the damage has been done.

You've got medications that make things better, and then you can do things like diet and exercise to address the needs.

The body has to continue being healthy.

- And when they go into that chaos mode, they're not thinking about things that would've normally been just part of a routine.

Taking your medicines every day, making sure you're exercising, making sure you're doing things.

Those things go out the window and you go into just survival mode.

- You know, the risk of someone falling is indirectly related to the, the diameter of their thigh.

So in other words, your quadriceps muscles are very important to your balance and to your risk of falling or lack of risk of falling.

So how do you keep a strong quadriceps?

You have to be active, right?

You have to be able to exercise and get out and walk and, and when people lose that ability, they become more frail and they have an increased risk of falling.

- When we first started in Marlo Wesley Community Center, it was like more recreational program fitness like exercises and stuff.

But then we realized that the seniors in this area, the barrio needed more than just recreational.

Some of them didn't have transportation to go to medical appointments.

- The whole panhandle has seen a, a growth of, of immigrants that have come in.

And some of them are from totally different cultures that we've seen.

- People of color and different types of social backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds are at, at a high risk for having food insecurity.

- And there's a huge disparity in how food insecurity affects our neighbors of color versus white neighbors.

- That's 29% of black people in the region who are facing food insecurity.

One in six or 18% of Hispanic people and one in 13 or 8% of white people are food insecure.

- Some of our seniors, they live in areas that don't have like a grocery store.

They probably have convenience stores, but they don't have a grocery store where they sell healthy foods.

- If you really tried to determine how many good grocery stores, let's say, are in some of our neighborhoods that are more challenged and, and culturally and racially diverse.

- Well let's say if we took one of the communities, the North Heights as an example, there are not a lot of grocery stores close to them.

Probably some of the closest ones they would purchase at would be say the United or the Walmart that are out there off of the Tasco Road area.

And that could be a four or five mile, one way trip for that person.

- And some of them, they just can't afford a car.

- Culturally speaking, Latin people have been known to take care of their elders.

How would you respond to somebody that said, well, senior food insecurity is not an issue for Latin seniors.

- No, no, no.

That's, we, Hispanics, we don't really use probably daycares or nursing homes.

But you know, a lot of our seniors, I guess their families, their sons, their kids, they have their own job, they have their own responsibilities and they just start not forgetting about them.

You know, but they have their own things going on.

And some of our seniors, like I said, they live on their own.

- My name is Fela Lopez and I was born in rio hundred Texas after my husband passed away.

It was just me.

We had been married 35 and 35 years.

And so that kind of made me not wanna eat.

I was home by myself.

I didn't want to eat and I would cry a lot.

There's a lot of benefits of interacting with people and it's very nice to be in a commun Wesley Community Center.

- I enjoy myself.

I don't have to stay home and by myself.

- Clarence Blackman is an 81-year-old army veteran battling prostate cancer, but cancer wasn't the reason he called 9 1 1.

- What I need is someone to get to the grocery store and bring me some food because I - Need to eat something - All across society we're facing.

I call, you know, a loneliness epidemic is, there's so many people who are lonely, okay?

And so even thinking about some of these people who, maybe they're seniors and maybe they do have, you know, not a, a low income, but they struggle on a day-to-day basis because they don't have anybody that cares for them.

You know, they don't have friends who care for them.

They don't have family nearby that care for them.

So that's some of the other reasons why people fall through the cracks.

- This idea of a lot of older adults being alone now due to a lot of different circumstances, whether that be divorced or being widowed or never married, not having kids, you know, they're alone and, and it's harder to address hunger and food insecurity by yourself than it is with a group.

- Their dementia, their depression, these kinds of things that are so common in elderly people.

They lived alone.

It would exacerbate these underlying mental issues.

You know, - The depression comes because they feel like somehow they can't provide for themselves and they, they don't want to ask for help.

- I have a granddaughter that comes and takes me to the doctor and my, the boy, he, the grandson, he's, he just had a new baby and he's busy but still ought to come.

And the weekends, I hardly ever see anybody.

- When we first started Tri-County Meals, we would go to every Lions club, every, every group, organization, church, whoever would listen to us, my husband would follow me around and I would talk about this kind of a program to feed senior citizens.

And we'd have pretty good groups and after I'm through, they would come up to us and go, oh, I think that'd be a wonderful idea, but we don't need that 'cause we take care of our neighbors.

We started just the home delivered meal program and three months later I get a call from a volunteer, I'm not gonna mention which community it was, and said that she went in to deliver this meal to this 85-year-old woman.

And she goes in and she's not feeling good.

And so she puts the milk in her refrigerator for her 'cause she's not going to eat right then.

And there's cat food in there and she doesn't have any cats.

And this woman had told her that there was an extra week that, that month for her social security, she paid all of her bills and she didn't have anything left.

So she went to the grocery store and they had cat food on sale and that really didn't taste that bad.

So we see that from time to time where you think they're okay, but they're not.

When you really go in and talk to someone, you know, our percentages are high for food insecurity and we we're constantly looking for ways that we can help.

That's what Tri-County is trying to accomplish.

- Food insecurity is complicated, it's complex, it's multifaceted.

- And thinking about food insecurity, it's to some extent is we've solved, you know, to, to use a lack of a better term, the low hanging fruit.

I know that if you keep food prices low, I know that if you have economic growth, I know that if you have a strong social safety net programs like Snap, we're gonna be, we're gonna do a pretty good job at overall reducing food insecurity.

From 2014 to 2021, we saw sharp declines in food insecurity.

I mean, food insecurity fell by 35% for the full population and for children it fell by about 40%.

- There's a lot that leaves me optimistic and I think at the heart of it is people, we have a lot of people in the Texas panhandle who are caring, who will step up and do work without getting acknowledgement that they're doing work.

The High Plains Food Bank does a phenomenal job in providing food resources for those partners.

- We partner with other organization, other nonprofit organizations throughout the panhandle.

They could be churches, they could be standalone food pantries, they could be shelters, soup kitchens, daycare centers, or ministerial, all alliances that are collaborating to establish an emergency food pantry.

- According to the High Plains Food Bank 2023 annual report, they served an average of 21,000 neighbors.

- We feed the Texas Panhandle through a network of 143 partner agencies, their food pantries and feeding programs that each serve their community.

- Well, the High Plains Food Bank was founded in 1982.

Really in the same amount of time that many food banks are across the United States begin to to pop up.

- The face of hunger in America has changed to include not only the transient and the elderly poor, but the thousands who are unemployed and their families who are dependent upon them at the same time, there are many people who are working very hard to end hunger.

Your local food bank is one example.

You can help them help others by donating food funds for your tithe.

- And the whole idea around it was a concern.

Community looking at two factors.

One, the amount of food that was going to going to waste and how could we preserve that food and then turn it around to meet the second factor, which is the need in the community.

Not, not only just, but the Texas panhandle.

Historically, when our organization was, was founded, it was based on, on that model of well, there's food and and resources in our community that are going to waste.

How can we collect those, rescue those, and then shift it over to folks.

- Everybody wants to do an jars of peanut butter, cans of beans donate and great, you know, we, we love food donations.

We'll accept food donations all day long.

We found that when clients are given a bag of food or a box of food, up to 40% of that is wasted.

But we found that a dollar we can, we can stretch a dollar a lot further than the average consumer.

- Really over the, the course of seven years or so, it when fresh produce became more readily available through, through our our state food bank network and there's a lot of produce that's grown San Antonio and South here in in Texas.

Having that shift specifically for seniors is, is crucial.

So that's when we started to incorporate, you know, more fresh produce, go after produce, go after protein.

These items that are needed in a, in a daily, in a daily diet.

- The way we look at ourselves, the way we look at our clients.

Every one of our volunteers wears a name tag with our first name written on that.

You know, we found that when you call somebody by their first name, that gives them dignity.

Lets them know that we're, we're in the same level.

We're equals.

We're no better than you are, you're no better than us.

So we wanna offer them.

Again, that's that whole dignified experience.

We treat everybody as that.

We're Jesus walking in the door, so we wanna - Love them.

If you look at who's running food pantries, if you're looking at who's doing all this stuff, it's a lot of faith based groups that, that are doing a lot of this stuff.

- Historically, maybe an antiquated practice was to make individuals sit through a talk, a sermon, a whatever before they were able to access food.

And that really kind of added insult to injury.

That was not the intention, I don't believe that was the intention, but it, it did kind of add insult to injury because you're already an already having to ask for help and they're already feeling less than and then you're putting another barrier between them and what they really need.

- Our pastor, he is the one that's told us about this, but we decided early on that we will not gauge our success by the number of baptisms we have or conversions we have.

All we want to do is provide foods, food to those that need it most.

- It is just as much, not only the food, but the, but it's also a wellness check.

- Our local Meals on Wheels is, is important and it's important for two things.

Number one, it gets a decent meal into the home of seniors, but it also allows them to check on seniors.

Yay.

- Nice time, lunch time, Sophie.

Okay, how are - You?

I'm good.

How you doing honey?

I do think that some of the work that we're doing can help find those people, can help connect them to the resources that they need and it can help improve their quality of life.

- In other words, we've made a lot of progress in terms of over some dimensions of addressing food insecurity.

But if I had to think about like the next frontier for addressing food insecurity, it's amongst seniors and figuring out how can we bring down their numbers.

- Unfortunately, I think we're always gonna have the hungry among us, and I think we're always gonna have those who are struggling among us.

I do think that some of the work that we're doing can help find those people, can help connect them to the resources that they need and can help improve their quality of life.

- I didn't think I would make it to this age and I'm still not ready for it.

- Funding for this program was provided by the Mary E Bivins Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.