PCOA Brings Tucson’s Work to the National Stage Staff return from the USAging Answers on Aging Conference with new ideas, new partners, and confirmation that Pima County is setting the pace US AGING CONFERENCE
Three members of the Pima Council on Aging team spent four days in San Diego this July at the 51 st annual USAging “Answers on Aging” Conference, joining roughly 1,500 professionals from Area Agencies on Aging across the country. President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Ojeda, Chief Program Officer Lisa Reams, and Director of Resources and Supports Deb Seng came home with pages of notes, a list of new contacts, and something harder to measure: proof that the work happening here is worth other communities studying. A conversation the field is ready to have Reams and Seng led a conference workshop on end-of-life care planning. Their session covered two things at once. First, how PCOA has built education and hands-on assistance with this planning directly into the services older adults already come to us for, rather than treating it as a separate specialty. Second, how that education can be shaped for Spanish-speaking older adults and their families, and for people living with dementia, so that the conversation happens in the right language and at the right moment. The response was immediate. Attendees from USAging and from agencies around the country stayed to ask questions, and several asked conference organizers to put more sessions like it
on future agendas. Planning for the end of life is a subject many families put off and many organizations avoid. The interest in that room suggested the field is ready to stop avoiding it. Learning in both directions
Pictured left to right: Robert Ojeda, President & CEO, Lisa Reams, Chief Program Officer, and Deb Seng, Director of Resources and Supports.
strengths, and this one did. Reams and her colleagues identified four areas where PCOA has room to grow: contracting and partnership with health care systems, building volunteer engagement more deliberately across the whole organization, forming more partnerships to address food insecurity, and working more closely with organizations across Arizona to change the systems older adults have to navigate. That last one may be the most ambitious. Statewide change asks more of everyone involved than any single agency can deliver on its own, but it also holds the most promise for the people we serve. PCOA is grateful for the chance to learn alongside colleagues from every corner of the country, and to bring the experience of Pima County’s older adults into a national conversation about what aging with dignity should look like. ◆
Beyond the workshop, PCOA staff took seats at roundtables and shared learning sessions on social connection, dementia programming, family caregiving, and veteran directed care. They also attended presentations on the growing use of artificial intelligence in aging services, nutrition programs that break from the standard model, transportation, elder rights and justice, and volunteer engagement. Three areas of PCOA’s work drew particular attention from colleagues elsewhere: end-of-life care planning, Memory Cafés for people with dementia and the people who care for them, and initiatives that help older adults keep their housing or find it again. In each of these, PCOA is being pointed to as a place other communities can learn from. What we came home to work on Conferences are useful when they show you your gaps as clearly as your
Page 10 | September & October 2026, Never Too Late
Pima Council on Aging
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