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Older adults, their family members and caregivers are invited to attend the fifth annual Aging Healthy in the RGV Senior Educational Summit to be held Thursday at the Brownsville Event Center, off Paredes Line Road.
The summit will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is free and open to all in the Rio Grande Valley. It is not age restricted.
Rose Timmer, of Healthy Communities, one of the summit sponsors, said there will be discussions on fraud, financial exploitation, Alzheimer’s, elder abuse, senior housing and movement.
With a growing older population in the Valley, Timmer said officials found it necessary to provide them with information that could help them, their families and caregivers.
Registration starts at 8:30 a.m. There will be coffee and pan dulce in the morning and a light lunch. There will be a loteria around noontime where those attending have a chance to win door prizes.
All speakers in attendance are bilingual. Presentations will be both in English and Spanish.
One of the speakers is Dr. Gladys Maestre, who is the director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Resource Center for Minority Age Research at the University of Texas Rio Grande.
Maestre will speak around noontime and will talk about dementia and Alzheimer’s and how it is affecting the Spanish and Latin population in the Valley.
“She is running some studies and she is going to talk about what she found (in the Valley) which is very important,” Timmer said. “She will talk about some of the signs that go with it (Alzheimer’s.) That is her specialty.”
Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks, according to the National Institute on Aging. In most people with Alzheimer’s, symptoms first appear later in life. Estimates vary, but experts suggest that more than 6 million Americans, most of them age 65 or older, may have dementia caused by Alzheimer’s.
One of the presenters will give a presentation on elder movement. “One of them is on how to fall, how to sit in a chair,” Timmer said.
Time permitting, those attending will allowed to ask questions or can approach the speakers during the day to ask questions.
Anyone seeking additional information may call Rose Timmer at (956) 543-5404.
