Devorah Lanner

The following letter to the editor from AARP Nebraska State Director Connie Benjamin was recently published in several Nebraska newspapers.

AARP Nebraska recently honored family caregiver, Teresa Thompson from Lincoln, during the annual Nebraska Caregiver Coalition luncheon held at the Governor’s Mansion.

Julie Dunn, a long-time community volunteer in Bennington, is the 2015 recipient of AARP Nebraska’s highest volunteer award. She is the 14th volunteer to be honored with the annual AARP Nebraska Andrus Award for Community Service since it was established in 2002.

AARP Nebraska is hosting several Life Reimagined workshops across Nebraska this fall to help people get inspired about their possibilities.

Guess who’s coming to Omaha on Sept. 10?

The Aging Nebraskans Task Force invites the public to attend upcoming town hall meetings on Alzheimer’s Disease in Kearney on Aug. 27, Omaha on Sept. 15 and Alliance on Sept. 29.

About 33,000 older Nebraskans currently have Alzheimer’s disease. That number is expected to jump by more than 20 percent in the next ten years as the population ages and the oldest boomers turn 80.

AARP and Nebraska Senior Health Insurance Information Program (SHIIP)* will present free sessions in August to help people prepare financially for retirement.

Family caregivers in Nebraska provided 182 million hours of care—worth an estimated $2.5 billion—to their parents, spouses, partners, and other adult loved ones in 2013, according to AARP Public Policy Institute’s new report, Valuing the Invaluable: 2015 Update. The total estimated economic value of uncompensated care provided by the nation’s family caregivers surpassed total Medicaid spending ($449 billion), and nearly equaled the annual sales ($469 billion) of the four largest U.S. tech companies combined (Apple, Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Microsoft) in 2013.

Did you know that nearly nine million seniors are at risk for hunger across the U.S.?