Elias Villalobos and his wife, Theresa Maldonradov, right, and Soila Arroyo, left, talk over a fruit buffet at an event for seniors hosted by the Latino Elder Coalition, at the Pelusi Building at Kennedy Park. Lianne Milton/Register
Sunday, August 24, 2008
By CARLOS VILLATORO
Register Staff Writer

The sun was shining, birds were chirping and a handful of senior citizens were getting down in the name of wellness.
On Saturday afternoon the Latino Elder Coalition hosted a unique event at the Pelusi Building, near Kennedy Park, that brought a little bit of groove to the lives of Latino seniors.
“This is a magnificent thing,” said Jesus Arroyo, one of the 200 or more seniors who attended. “There is a lot of information about exercise, health and to avoid falls.”

Arroyo — who said heard about the event through the Volunteer Center, one of the agencies that make up the Latino Elder Coalition — and his peers were treated to various workshops that were designed to keep them active and help prevent falls.
Four workshops including Zumba dance, exercise, fall prevention and art therapy kept participants buzzing through the day.

Zumba Gold dance instructor DJ Lipton, who teaches a Zumba Gold class at Queen of the Valley Medical Center’s Synergy Wellness Center, had a vast crowd of seniors moving to the sounds of cumbia, merengue and salsa music.
“One of the main benefits (of Zumba) is that you are using your thighs,” Lipton said. “One of the reasons why seniors start falling is because they lose the ability to shift their weight.”

By dancing, especially to Latin music Lipton said, seniors can work those muscles that allow them to shift their weight more freely, helping them prevent falls.

Falls can prove to be costly accidents for seniors according to Terri Deits, a planner for the Area Agency on Aging Napa-Solano. Diets said that a fall can cost $40,000 or more in hospitalization fees.

“Often times they break their hips, it can be costly,” she said.

Deits, who also works with Stop Falls Napa Valley, a group dedicated to helping seniors avoid falls, said that falls are a significant problem among seniors and that Latinos may not fully be aware of the dangers.

“We don’t see as many Latino seniors as we’d like to,” she said.

Across from Lipton’s dance session, Maria Soria, a volunteer at Clinic Olé and member of its Promotores de Salud Program, taught seniors various exercises that could be done from their living room couches.

A cooking demonstration taught the values of cooking with olive oil and an art therapy workstation had many seniors and their grandchildren creating mini works of art.

Organizers of Saturday’s event, the Latino Elder Coalition, say that many Latinos feel isolated in Napa and may not know of services available to them.

“The purpose is to celebrate our elderly in the Napa Community and helping them in accessing information to better their lives ... culturally and linguistically,” said Salvador Nunez, Latino Elder Coalition committee member and a social worker at Queen of the Valley Medical Center. “Latinos tend to be isolated, they don’t participate in the traditional things that other elderly persons participate in the valley.”