By Rin Porter

Under the leadership of Round Prairie resident Verna Toenyan and a committee of dedicated volunteers, Todd County has become the recipient of a $10,000 Healthy Communities Partnership (HCP) grant from the Initiative Foundation, based in Little Falls.

The grant will bring a year of leadership team training and discussion opportunities to county residents to help them plan for the future.  The focus of the grant is on our aging population, and the opportunities and challenges that aging brings to everyone.

Todd County was one of four communities selected to receive the grant and training in 2010.  Since 1999, HCP has helped more than 80 Central Minnesota communities to created a shared community vision and plan for the future.

The other three communities selected for 2010 HCP grants are the City of Brainerd, the City of Eden Valley, and Baldwin Township in Sherburne County.  Each has a different approach to its grant.

Todd County’s grant funds will be used to bring Todd County citizens together to create a common vision for a future that will be affected by an aging population.  County residents will focus on both assets and challenges, and create a plan to work together for the common good.

In addition, Minnesota Public Radio will concentrate radio broadcast attention on Todd County and three other communities, sending reporters and writers here to find and tell the stories we think are important.  They will work with local media to get a feel for the cities and townships that make up the county, then strike out on their own.

Dan Frank, Initiative Foundation program manager for community development, said in a telephone interview, “This is the first time we’ve selected a project that focuses on the aging population. It’s a big issue.  As we look down the road, we need to think about what this will mean for our future.  We all have a stake in it.  Aging is not always a negative thing.  Yes, it means having certain services available for people, but it also means identifying what older people do particularly well. Everyone needs to have this conversation ... so that we can make our communities better.”

The first public information meeting about the grant and the radio stories is taking place on Feb. 17 at the Browerville Community Center.  Daylong team training sessions will be held in March, April, August, and September 2010.  A community meeting to report on progress will be held one year later, in September 2011.

How the grant got started

In a telephone interview, Verna Toenyan explained how the grant got submitted.  “Last fall,” she said, “We were discussing in Eagle Bend about senior services, and about the ‘silver tsunami’ that’s coming and how we are not prepared to meet the future.”

The “silver tsunami” is a term coined in 2002 by Mary Finn Maples, Professor of Counseling and Educational Psychology at the University of Nevada at Reno.  It refers to the Baby Boomer generation – the 76 million people who began celebrating their 60th birthdays in 2006.  According to AARP, Maples wrote in a 2007 article, each day in the U.S., 8,000 people turn 60.

According to research reported by the Alliance for Aging Research, by the year 2030, almost one out of every five Americans (72 million people) will be 65 years or older.  Individual life expectancy is increasing, but an increasing proportion of seniors over 65 suffer from health problems and chronic diseases. The local health care system must prepare to care for many more people, perhaps in new ways. 

Mrs. Toenyan, who is the Todd County Coordinator of Aging,  said her Eagle Bend senior discussion group was concerned about the silver tsunami from many perspectives.  In their view, aging affects everything:  children, the work force, transportation, health care, education, and so forth.  They felt that Todd County was a strong county with outstanding senior services in 2009, but was not looking ahead.

The senior discussion group was interested in applying for a grant, and Mrs. Toenyan contacted the Todd County Board, County Administrator Nate Burkett, her Social Services supervisors, and others to get their opinions about it.  She spoke to people at the Initiative Foundation, and a meeting was held in Little Falls to explain the process of the HCP.  The group decided to go ahead, and they prepared the application for the grant, recruited a team, and submitted their application.  

The Initiative Foundation HCP grant they received is a five-year grant, and will prepare the team to work with additional funders and do additional projects after the first year of training is completed.   

What the grant will accomplish

Toenyan, Frank, and the leadership team want as many Todd County citizens as possible to take part in the opportunities for discussions and planning that the grant will provide.  “We will be working with other agencies including the Todd County Council on Aging, Lutheran Social Services, the Central Minnesota Council on Aging, the Minnesota Board on Aging, Todd County Social Services, Todd County Public Health, Central Lakes College, and others,” Mrs. Toenyan said.  

Mrs. Toenyan offered the bundled services program, which started in 2006, as an example of what could be planned for seniors aged 60 and over.  The bundled services program is a collaborative program that brings together Todd County Public Health, Lutheran Social Services, the Senior Coordinator, and other agencies to provide two weeks of meals for rural residents who are homebound and can’t cook for themselves.  The program also offers to deliver groceries, medication, and library books every 14 days along with the frozen meals.

“This kind of planning needs to be done for more than just meal service and medication,” she said.  “We can do that through the Health Communities Partnership grant.”

The Initiative Foundation’s Dan Frank said, “We want to have the best outcomes possible for everyone.  The team may recommend action projects like street curb cuts, an improved transportation network, local shopping, local pharmacies, and other suggestions that are good for older people.  But it turns out, these suggestions are good for everybody!  This is what we found in one of our previous HCPs.  We hope that Todd County will end up with a plan created by the community that takes advantage of community assets throughout the county, and meets the challenges that exist.”

The discussions over the next six months may include specific ideas like how to prevent falls, how to manage chronic health conditions, and how to invent funding partnerships to pay for health care, as well as ideas about how to provide more opportunities for seniors to volunteer, to stay in their homes, to keep working, and to stay in touch with family and friends.

The radio broadcasts by MPR will explain to the whole state of Minnesota what Todd County is doing and tell individual stories that the reporters uncover about people, businesses, farms, churches, schools, and so on.  Dave Peters of MPR will be at the meeting on Feb. 17 to begin gathering ideas for stories that are broader than the aging focus on the HCP grant. MPR’s work is funded by the Bush Foundation, as part of their emphasis on local community leadership and decision-making.

How you can help

Even if you can’t attend the meetings, you can still be part of the Health Community Partnership in a variety of ways. One way is to fill out the survey that MPR has developed about community issues.  For each completed survey, MPR will donate to the HCP fund. You can find the survey online at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/prehcptoddcountysurvey .  It will take most people between five and fifteen minutes to complete depending on how much detail you decide to include.  MPR will also be asking you to complete this survey again six to eight months from now so we can see if our work together over that time changes any of your opinions on these issues.

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