In less than 20 years, the U.S. population aged 65 and older will reach 78 million. By 2050, more than half of this population will be from American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Black and African American, Hispanic and Latinx, and LGBTQ+ communities. And with 88% of older adults preferring to remain in their homes and 92% in their communities, the need for culturally competent, equitable aging services has never been more urgent. This shift reveals a glaring gap: our federal programs and systems are ill-equipped to support the way diverse, older adults age. Beyond that, this reality leaves caretakers at the mercy of a broken system. The Diverse Elders Coalition (DEC), a national advocacy organization formed on the principle that a collective voice is more powerful than individual ones, exists to close this gap.The DEC (comprised of six organizations), regularly refocuses and revisits its roots as a research-based community organization to focus on creating opportunities, training, and materials to advocate for system changes and advance equity for diverse elders. Through a coordinated, collective voice, the DEC boosts its members’ capacities, allowing their advocacy and outreach to achieve greater impact.
A strategic partnership between Communications Director Ocean Le and Washington, D.C.-based Director of Policy and Advocacy Didier Trin drives the DEC’s operations. With Metta Fund support, DEC has been able to establish a dedicated presence in the nation’s capital. In his current role, Mr. Trinh is responsible for championing the needs of diverse older adults to federal policymakers, focusing on relationship-building with ally organizations, legislators, and federal agencies to increase education and awareness, with a special emphasis on caregiving. As he puts it,
“Our role is to make sure policy reflects the real lives of diverse older adults and family caregivers — not just in theory, but in practice. That means listening first, and then advocating together.”
Mr. Trinh’s role builds on Mr. Le’s work to advance research and strategic communications.To establish a foundational understanding, the DEC conducted nationwide research into the six communities represented by its member organizations, surveying 2,000 diverse caregivers and conducting 36 in-language interviews. However, when the 2020 pandemic hit, the coalition pivoted. The original goal of sharing this research with providers shifted to the more urgent need of directly getting information and resources to the communities themselves.
This period underscored a crucial lesson: to effectively advocate for diverse communities, their lived experiences must inform all strategy. In the last 2-to-3 years, with this foundational work complete, the DEC has shifted back to policy and advocacy.
This synergy between research and policy is amplified by the DEC’s direct work to transform the systems that serve these communities. Their “Caring for Those Who Care” curriculum has trained over 4,500 professionals to date, and recent data show its powerful impact: 92% of participating service providers agree they are better able to meet the needs of people from diverse communities, and 96% would recommend the training, based on DEC participant excerpts and feedback.
“I tend to focus on how stressful and burdensome caregiving is. What resonated with me from the training is understanding that caregiving can be meaningful, give a sense of purpose and be a source of pride” noted one participant. Another noted how crucial it is to lean into culture and language-specific learnings, saying, “I appreciated how this training was broken down into different cultures and not just presented as general elder care.”
“We realized that in order to effectively advocate, we needed to do more research into community,” Mr. Le explains, noting this research identified critical systemic barriers like historical distrust and a profound lack of multilingual resources.
In addition to the team’s commitment to research and teachings, Mr. Le is spearheading a storytelling campaign that he hopes will give the challenges of caretaking during these unprecedented political times a human face via caretaker interviews and short-form video and photography.
This campaign is central to the DEC’s mission. “We realized our collective voices are stronger than the individual,” says Mr. Le. “We’re getting back to sharing stories of the communities to reveal to individuals that we are more alike than anything else,” especially during trying times. The campaign’s second objective is “to humanize the caregiving role, so that policy makers could understand what’s going on…. We’re not putting a face to the policy, we’re putting a face to the person” experiencing challenges in caretaking.
The DEC will collect in-depth video interviews with family caregivers from diverse and underrepresented communities and turn them into stories, experiences, and excerpts that will be shared with legislators on the Hill, and beyond. For Mr. Le, this is the heart of the work. “Beyond the numbers, I want to speak to the actual individuals who are going through these things to let people know you’re not alone and we can mobilize and incite change,” he says.
At a national level, the DEC has organized educational visits with key congressional committees and caucuses, taken a leading role in advocating for the implementation of critical legislation like the RAISE Act, and the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act, and submitted public comments and letters. For example, it has urged the exclusion of Medicaid cuts and supported the Act on RAISE campaign powered by the National Alliance for Caregiving – focused on driving implementation of the actions outlined in the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers (National Strategy).
This mission of support becomes even more critical in the face of immediate political threats. The potential implementation of the 2025 reconciliation bill, which proposes slashing Medicaid funding and adding exclusionary new eligibility requirements for SNAP, poses a direct danger to members of these communities. For many people, losing Medicaid means losing the very home- and community-based services that make independent living possible, directly threatening the 88% of older adults who wish to remain in their homes as they age.
In response, the DEC acts as a vital information lifeline. “We’re continuously monitoring the implementation timeline for this and currently sharing out factsheets for our communities,” says Mr. Le. This small but nimble team works closely with members to publicize via blogs, newsletters, and all available communication channels, how to get the funding to care for aging loved ones.
The DEC stands as an essential force during a pivotal political moment. By uniting trusted organizations, grounding its work in evidence, research, and a people-and-community-centered methodology, the DEC can and does champion and advocate for the needs of the future majority of older Americans.
Looking to the future, Mr. Le says that in the future under a new administration, “if someone asks me if I was still doing this changemaking work, I want to be able to say that I did, that I let people know the importance of supporting diverse family caregivers.”