News Brief: Census Lauds RIC-Based Program for Partnership to Count Seniors

Age-Friendly Rhode Island (AFRI), a RIC-based coalition of community and state agencies committed to healthy aging, has been recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau for its partnership with R.I. Complete Count to conduct outreach to seniors during the pandemic.

This partnership formed in March 2020 in response to pandemic restrictions, with the goal of finding creative ways to do Census2020 outreach to older adults. The initiative expanded to include Rhode Island College and University of Rhode Island students in need of volunteer hours, who made wellness and census checks on seniors via phone calls.

Last April students volunteering with AFRI were assigned an allotted number of hours to make phone calls and were given course credit to do so. Students received training from R.I. Complete Count and phone-banked using Rhode Island voter rolls, which were sorted by age to include households with at least one family member aged 60 and up. The bulk of the calls were made to households in West Warwick and Woonsocket, two communities where a census undercount of older adults was reported in 2010 and where senior services providers welcomed help to get resources to isolated elders during the pandemic.

Data from the project shows that 6,100 calls were made to older adults in West Warwick and 5,400 in Woonsocket. In addition to Census2020 information, the student callers shared helpful phone numbers for the COVID-19 hotline at the R.I. Department of Health, The POINT (Rhode Island's Healthy Aging Help Desk) and Project HELLO, an initiative of the Rhode Island Office of Healthy Aging, where isolated older adults can sign up to receive regular friendly check-in calls from vetted volunteers.

Upon completion of the project, Debb Smith, a U.S. Census official, attended an AFRI coalition meeting to express appreciation for the "effective and creative partnership," citing the increase in census participation in both communities.  FRI will continue to work with the U.S. Census Bureau to disseminate data concerning Rhode Island's older adults to promote initiatives that support the health and well-being of our state's aging population.