Growing up in Buffalo, New York, Katarina Sako ’24 was very close to her grandparents.
“Spending time with my grandparents was really an important part of my childhood, and it helped me develop a lot of compassion and respect for older adults in our community,” Sako says.
Katarina Sako ’24 speaks with a participant in the recent Age Well Days event (Photo by Charles Wainwright)
Sako’s interactions with her grandparents, including more recently as part of her family’s role in caregiving, planted the seed for her interest in her work assisting older adults through the creation of community programming.
Sako is an volunteer through . As a community organizer, Sako works to improve how older adults get connected to services that can help them thrive.
“I’m able to look at systemic issues in our society and how that impacts older adults and their health,” says Sako, who is also working to strengthen and expand a coalition of aging services organizations. “Because you can’t really address one facet without addressing the model.”
As an undergraduate student, Sako was initially interested in researching memory from a psychology perspective. She joined a lab at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and through that work, Sako decided to focus on neurodegeneration and dementia from a biology perspective.
“When you’re talking about dementia, which is my hope to study as a geriatrician, it’s not just focused on the biology—you can’t just address things from a biological perspective,” she says. “You really need to look at the entire person.”
The skills utilized in her current role took shape during her time on campus, where she majored in biology and neuroscience and minored in Spanish in the .
Katarina Sako demonstrates an apple crisp recipe during a recent Age Well Day event in Syracuse
Sako volunteered as a telehealth consultant over the summer with InterFaith Works. She created a pilot program to help older adults gain the skills needed to navigate telehealth appointments, which gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There are a lot of benefits offered by telehealth, such as not going in person to your doctor’s appointment, which can be especially helpful if you have mobility issues,” says Sako. “However, technology issues can be really challenging for many older adults.”
The AmeriCorps VISTA program is focused on reducing poverty in the community. Sako’s skills and experience made her the perfect fit for the community organizer role.
Lori Klivak, senior director for the Center for Healthy Aging at InterFaith Works, was Sako’s supervisor in her telehealth consultant role and later introduced Sako to the community organizer opportunity, where Klivak continues to be Sako’s supervisor.
One of InterFaith Works’ initiatives is the Greater 鶹ƵAging Services Coalition, which started in 2020 to unite aging services organizations under one umbrella.
One of the ways Sako reaches out and makes connections is through Age Well Days, an event that brings community services together for older adults. During the most recent event, held on Sept. 24 at Park Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Syracuse, attendees were served a healthy lunch (including a salad made by Sako). They heard presentations from community organizations on health, digital literacy, voting and food assistance, while Sako demonstrated how to make a healthy (and tasty) apple crisp. Attendees took home fresh produce.
“These are opportunities for lower-income older adults in the community to receive important services. The goal is to have people actively enroll in things,” says Sako. “For example, if you need food assistance or you are experiencing food insecurity, let’s enroll you in SNAP. We want to ease this enrollment process because as much as we have these resources available, the number of older adults who are actually enrolled in these programs is low.”
A timeline of Age Well Day events is still being determined, but Sako plans to hold the events at three different locations throughout the community. The Sept. 24 event focused on eating well, and funding was provided by the 鶹ƵOnondaga Food Systems Alliance.
Sako believes the project has a lot of longevity. “You could compare it to a resource fair, but it’s really meant to be a more intimate setting where we’re connecting with the participants who are there,” she says. “It’s affirming the dignity of all races, all religions and recognizing the diversity that is 鶹Ƶand Onondaga County.”
“My hope is that in forming these connections, we’re able to build long-term partnerships for the Greater 鶹ƵAging Services Coalition,” Sako says. “Our goal is promoting aging well in the community and reiterating that ageism doesn’t have a place here.”
Klivak says that Sako’s work is helping to fill a critical gap between services and knowledge. “We have programs, we have support, we have things in place in our community that can help older adults who age better,” she says. “But there’s a gap between what people understand or know about what we have and actually providing those services. And we don’t have all the services in all the right places.”
“Our goal is to improve the way that we, as service providers and program providers get information out, connect with communities and build relationships with communities so that they feel comfortable coming to us,” Klivak says.
It’s also raising awareness about what older people need that goes beyond the conventional wisdom that may focus on food or heat assistance or health care. There are other needs, such as AIDS and HIV prevention, digital literacy and voting issues that are not at the forefront of people’s minds.
“You may think of food or help with heat, but you’re not thinking about how it may not be easy for them to get on a computer or a smartphone and access these resources,” Klivak says. “We tend to think about aging through the lens of death, disease and decline, but that’s not the full story.”
Older adults are the number one voting bloc, the number one volunteering demographic and 42% of the local tax base, Klivak says. “These are people who are helping raise their grandchildren, helping their neighbors and who want to communicate with friends who have moved, all sorts of things,” she says. “And we want them to thrive.”
Klivak says as more outreach and connections are made, everyone is learning how to move the conversation forward and change the narrative to be more age-positive and age-friendly.
Klivak says that Sako has been a good fit for her role. “She is pretty fearless,” she says. “She jumps right in, asks really good questions and then just gets to work.”
Her title, community organizer, illustrates her mission to build relationships. “This is about making change, and change happens when people trust you,” Klivak says. “Her primary role is to be out and about in the community, meeting people, learning what’s going on, getting people interested in what we’re doing. And she has taken that seriously.”
Ultimately, Sako believes that, through her work, she is honoring her grandparents. “I think my grandparents could also benefit from Age Well days, definitely,” Sako says. “I think that they’re happy that I’m trying to make a difference.”
