Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Older Adults Committee, Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Date: Tuesday, June 2, 2026
Place: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Virginia
Length: 1h 17m (video)
Official meeting video (Fairfax County): https://video.fairfaxcounty.gov/player/clip/4164
Official Board of Supervisors page (Fairfax County): https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/boardofsupervisors/

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-27. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:07] Okay. Good morning, everybody. Let's go ahead and get started. Welcome to the June 2nd, 2026 meeting of the board's older adults committee meeting. We have a few items on the agenda tonight or this morning. It's not tonight. Not yet. We're not going to go that long.

[00:00:28] But I do, before we get started, I did want to recognize we have several members of our Commission on Aging that are here. I would ask, would you members please stand up here? Thank you very much for attending. And thank you all for all your work on these issues. We're going to be covering it and so many more over the last few years. It's really making a difference. So thank you again. The first item we have is an update. This is something that we do every year, and it's

[00:01:06] going to be an update on the Shape the Future of Aging plan. And we have Bethann Margetta from the Area Agency on Aging. Bethann, go ahead and take it away. Hey, it's nice to see all of you again. I'm Bethann Margetta. I'm an assistant program manager with the Fairfax Area Agency on Aging, or the AAA, and I have the pleasure of supporting the work of the Shape the Future of aging program. At the last Older Adults Committee meeting, we reviewed steps that were taken to

[00:01:42] operationalize the SHAPE plan. I'm delighted to take this opportunity to share progress of the third year of SHAPE implementation and updates on initiatives. As you know, the SHAPE plan acts as a North Star, not only internally as we evaluate the needs of the older adult population and their caregivers, but also to inform and support the work of community-based organizations that serve and support the same populations. The plan was intentionally designed to be aligned with the county-wide strategic plan and one Fairfax. Since we last shared an update, SHAPE initiative development committees have continued to meet regularly to identify initiatives and move the

[00:02:21] work of SHAPE forward. The Commission on Aging members who co-facilitate these committees have focused attention on identifying long-term priority areas of focus and visioning impact. The COA members have also focused on reframing ageism through revisiting equity discussions with a lens to ensure inclusive language is woven into the fabric of new initiatives, avoiding ageist stereotypes.

[00:02:46] Next slide, please. That's actually next slide, too. Thank you. Now I'll go over some updates on completed initiatives. You will recall a DOT system is used as a measure of progress on the scorecards included on the next three slides of the presentation.

[00:03:04] Also note that the page numbers referenced under the recommendations refer to the SHAPE plan in your packet. One of the completed initiatives developed out of the Services Committee was the Market Research and Awareness Campaign. This initiative was created to help provide information to adult and aging on how to improve awareness in the community of the county services for older adults, caregivers, and adults with disabilities.

[00:03:28] Multiple recommendations from the market research have been implemented that will help improve awareness of adult and aging services in the community, which I'll go into more detail later in the presentation. Another successfully achieved initiative is the Exploring the Dimensions of Aging Embodied Labs pilot.

[00:03:46] You'll recall the Inova ElderLink team presented a demonstration on one of the virtual labs to this committee in the fall of 2024. The Embodied Labs pilot expanded significantly, adding immersive modules which support end-of-life conversations and advanced care planning.

[00:04:02] The initiative is now fully established as an ongoing program supporting both professional and family caregivers. Another completed initiative out of the Housing and Neighborhood Support Committee is the Consumer Guide to Home Repair and Renovation, developed through a collaboration with Rebuilding Together and the Department of Housing and Community Development.

[00:04:22] It is a tool with resources to support consumers who wish to age in place. The guide can be found online on the Adult and Aging webpage and is now available in the top languages spoken in the county. Next slide, please. Another completed initiative was a pilot from the Personal Well-Being SHAPE Committee, the Creating the Fairfax Culture of Connection.

[00:04:44] It was created to address the recommendation to increase community engagement and decrease social isolation of older residents, while also increasing inclusion and acceptance for all older adults. The pilot was championed by Neighborhood and Community Services, the Coordinating Council on Aging and Adults with Disabilities, the CCAAD, and the Fairfax AAA.

[00:05:05] One goal of the initiative was to educate and build awareness in the community of the importance of social connection in combating loneliness in the Fairfax area. The pilot was successfully completed this year with a coalition of partner organizations within the CCAAD.

[00:05:21] Following former Surgeon General Vivek Murphy's six pillars of connection as a framework, the pilot produced a practical guidebook with replicable strategies for communities to increase social connection. And finally, the Economic Stability and Planning Committee has successfully introduced financial planning seminars in senior centers through Bright Paths.

[00:05:43] These workshops were developed to address the recommendation to increase awareness and education for financial security to prevent and reduce economic distress of older adults and provide tips for adults living on a fixed income. They have been made available through senior center classes as well as the Virtual Center for Active Adults.

[00:06:00] Next slide, please. While the work of some initiatives has been completed, the work of others continues. Next, I'd like to highlight three new initiatives that have begun since the last annual report. A new initiative to assess and strengthen the Community Ambassador Program was established through the Services Committee.

[00:06:21] This initiative connects directly to SHAPE recommendations around partnering with trusted leaders and responds to market research recommendations, which identify the ambassadors as a strong channel for outreach. This initiative will seek to expand the Community Ambassador Program through surveying existing ambassadors, soliciting feedback to identify areas of opportunity, with a goal of growing the program and continuing to build outreach in the community through trusted partners.

[00:06:48] Another new initiative from the Housing and Neighborhood Supports Committee is an Affordable Housing Case Brief. This initiative seeks to elevate the needs of affordable housing options centering on older adults, adults with disabilities, and caregivers. The brief will outline common challenges and barriers faced by these populations, offer recommendations for more inclusive and robust housing solutions, and ultimately be shared through stakeholder networks to bring the needs of older adults to the forefront of equitable housing efforts.

[00:07:18] Next, another new initiative, the Silver Shield Scam Information Text Alerts, comes from the Economic Stability and Planning Shape Committee to address the recommendation of increasing awareness of protections to prevent financial exploitation of older adults. This initiative aims to increase awareness of scam and fraud prevention information and existing resources through a scam alert channel available through Fairfax County's alert system, or Fairfax Alerts.

[00:07:46] This is championed by the Silver Shield Anti-Scam Program with key cross-agency partners of the Silver Shield Steering Committee, including the Department of Emergency Management and Security, or DEMS, the Office of Public Affairs, the Fairfax County Police Department, land development services. This initiative was developed to provide subscribers with an opportunity to receive valuable information about scams while being mindful of the frequency and volume of scheduled alerts. While we know that text alerts can be an efficient and expedient tool to reach those in need of information, the core group tasked with developing a plan for

[00:08:20] relaying this information to subscribers considered cadence and content to avoid text message fatigue. This was to ensure that those who need critical information are not ignoring alerts when we're trying to reach them. This initiative will provide regularly scheduled texts about scam resource information and will also amplify messaging about pervasive scams affecting the community, collaborating with the police department and Dems to share needed alerts with subscribers when a scam rises to a heightened level of concern. As I shared at the last annual update, the Silver Shield anti-scam campaign officially moved under the Fairfax

[00:08:55] AAA as of this past October and is now the Silver Shield anti-scam program. All previous partners who helped shape Silver Shield into what it is today remain involved in the steering committee. We continue to embrace creative and low or no cost outreach efforts and utilize trained volunteers for tabling Silver Shield community outreach events. As you know, Silver Shield has no funding and no fully retained staff positions and has relied on collaborative cross-agency staff time and volunteers to drive the work forward. We continue that collaboration to keep Silver Shield outreach as robust as possible with continued limited resources.

[00:09:35] The anti-scam text alerts were promoted at the Scam Jam event in April, where the Department of Emergency Management and Security had a table and supported a live sign-up to the channel. And we ask that you help us to spread the word in your newsletters and promote this through your networks. Next slide, please. We know that awareness of adult and aging services was identified as an area of opportunity through the last community assessment survey of older adults, the CASWA, in 2022. Addressing this need has been a common thread, pulling the SHAPE initiatives together. We've demonstrated an increased effort in extending the reach of service information to

[00:10:12] residents across the Fairfax area, building on partnerships to move the work forward. As I mentioned earlier, we've worked to implement multiple strategies from the market research recommendations to boost visibility and increase community awareness of services. Some of these strategies included updating communications materials and channels, while streamlining information online and updating print and digital materials in top languages spoken in Fairfax.

[00:10:38] Not only have we optimized materials in multiple top languages, but we have expanded formats, including updating the adult and aging website to prioritize ease of navigation and curating content based on user needs. For example, creating an advanced care planning hub online on the adult and aging webpage, with more inclusive visuals of caregivers incorporated into content in print materials and creating flyers in larger font to support a wider range of visual abilities.

[00:11:07] These changes have been implemented while considering reading levels. We have made flyers and brochures accessible in high contact areas such as senior centers, libraries, and at a range of community events through our mobile outreach initiative. We continued a broad advertising campaign this year, featuring two public service announcements titled A Pivotal Moment in Aging and Adult Protective Services. These PSAs were developed to promote awareness of Older Americans Act services provided through Adult and Aging. These PSAs were promoted county and statewide and will soon be available in all of the top 10 languages in Fairfax County on our webpage.

[00:11:46] The SHAPE Mobile Outreach Initiative team has continued to build additional partnerships over the last year, which have increased opportunities for outreach. Through this initiative, adult and aging materials are being circulated not only through sister agencies, but also through mobile nonprofit partners at outreach events across the county. We've been able to extend our reach of 14 different locations in 11 different zip codes in the last year, in addition to adult and aging specific events. Next slide, please. I'd like to close with some highlights. Great progress has been accomplished over the past year of implementation, and this is only a snapshot

[00:12:24] of some outcomes and next steps. Several initiatives have developed useful resources which have been expanded upon this third year of the SHAPE plan. An advanced care planning pilot workshop provided by our SHAPE partner, Goodwin Living, was recorded by Channel 16 and is now available online through the advanced care planning hub I mentioned. The Adult and Aging Partner Toolkit, which provides flyers for services and also has social media ready posts to help consumers easily cut and paste information to build awareness of resources in their networks has been promoted through our SHAPE partners and remains a reliable resource to share and spread the word about our services.

[00:13:04] Care Mobile, a program of service source and a SHAPE partner, won first place Best Practices Award from the Commonwealth Council on Aging this May. Care Mobile is an innovative, community-based, portable program designed to promote health, wellness, and social connection among older adults and adults with disabilities.

[00:13:23] Operating through a public-private partnership with Fairfax County, Care Mobile brings services directly to neighborhoods identified through the One Fairfax initiative, helping eliminate barriers that often prevent individuals from participating in health-promoting activities. SHAPE has been a bridge for community and county partnerships, bringing educational workshops offered by nonprofit partners into the county senior centers and libraries, A bright spot, which we'll learn more about in one of the following presentations, which has brought Goodwin Living's 12-week brain health program to all county senior centers

[00:13:58] and promotes improved physical, mental, and social wellness, is our stronger memory. There will be another community assessment survey of older adults. The COSOA administered this June, and it launches this week. The COSOA is a nationally benchmarked survey and helps support the SHAPE plan development.

[00:14:16] This new survey data will help inform our work moving forward into the next iteration of the strategic plan, and there will be two phases to the survey. While 22,000 households will be receiving a paper survey this year, we will also be able to expand our reach through an open survey process available to all older adults in Fairfax, which will launch on June 30th. We ask that you help us spread the word through your networks and share a link to the CASOA survey at the end of June. Information about the KISOA and a flyer can be found on our partner toolkit that I mentioned as well.

[00:14:51] The full SHAPE report and annual update will be available on the County SHAPE webpage, and, of course, we'll share another annual update of SHAPE next year. But I'd like to thank you for this opportunity, and I welcome your comments.

[00:15:07] Thank you very much, Bethann. I appreciate that. Just one quick piece that you mentioned. Just want to remind everybody, most of these initiatives are outreach and awareness. There's also the COSOA survey. So just encourage everybody to keep using your communications channels, your district offices, newsletters, social media, whatever it is that you do, and really amplify these initiatives because that's really what makes a big difference.

[00:15:35] I'll turn it over to the chairman and then go on. Yeah, I just have two questions. First of all, great update. Appreciate all the work that's being done here. The two questions I have, with the Silver Shield Anti-Scam Text Alert Program, that's a voluntary sign-up for folks, as you mentioned.

[00:15:55] I'm just curious as to how many people have signed up for that to date, and what other ways, if we have seniors who don't do texting, what other ways do we have to reach them about up-to-date information involving scams?

[00:16:13] I can get you the information about the current subscribers, I can look at that for you, and great comment. Thank you for the feedback. We'll be looking at additional ways we can promote it. Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, I think the text alerts are fantastic.

[00:16:29] I mean, I think they'll work for most people, but obviously there's going to be some people in our population that might want an alternative way to figure that out. The only other question I have with the community assessment survey of older adults, help me understand how the questions are determined, what the scope of them is, and what the return we get on the, I think you mentioned there were 22,000 paper households that will get the survey and paper.

[00:17:00] Do you have any idea of what our expected return rate is, and then also who determines the scope of the questions that are in there? So the questions are standardized. It is a nationally benchmarked survey. And in terms of the response rate, I can find what ours was the four and a half years ago when we did the last one.

[00:17:23] So I can get that information to you. The reason I'm asking that is because it is a national survey, we want to get a real handle on localized how our seniors respond to it. because it could be very different than the responses that other communities get.

[00:17:41] And if we are under responding to it, then we're not getting the full breadth of concerns, answers to some of the survey questions from our older adults. And I just want to make sure, you know, when we benchmark ourselves against others in the country that we expect to always do better in, I guess, really, in getting response rates up and making sure that we're getting a real feel for what's on our older adults' minds.

[00:18:11] And so if you could give us a little bit better information about that. I mean, obviously, we'll need information to put out in our newsletter and push it out and help you with that. But if I'm a senior and I am reading a newsletter, I would want to know why is this important for me to participate?

[00:18:29] What are the results used for? How will I fill out the survey? I just, I need more information about it to help explain it to the community. I'm sorry, Chris. No, Mr. Chairman, thank you. Great points. I will point out the last couple cycles we've gone through this, the response rate has been pleasantly very high, to the extent where I felt very comfortable that it was statistically significant.

[00:18:54] That was when we first started this several cycles ago. That was one of our big concerns. We wanted to compare it to kind of how we use the goldmine of information. I feel the youth survey, and, of course, that's a more captured survey because the kids are already in school, this being male-based, but this organization really knows what they're doing.

[00:19:15] That's why it's, to me, I really feel like it has become the gold standard for our older adults to be able to tell us what they're seeing. So we'll get the exact response rate was, but that was a concern I had six years ago when we first started this.

[00:19:34] but I've been very pleasantly surprised about the strong response rate we've received. Okay, and Chris, the 22,000 paper households is determined by that organization based only on age? So what they'll do, this is almost like, I don't know how you guys do what you do with regards to your political polling, but seeing a little bit of the insight on how they go about doing this, they want to make sure that it's not only statistically significant, but it's also demographically provided for or accommodated. So that group does an excellent job to make sure that we've got a nice, well-rounded

[00:20:11] survey response rate that's indicative of the diverse community that we serve. Okay. That's excellent. I mean, that's the reason for my questioning is, you know, we want a high return rate, but we also want a high return rate that reflects the demographics of the community that's being surveyed. And so whenever an outside organization does that, it is concerning to make sure that the feedback that we're getting is statistically relevant, and so I appreciate that answer. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Supervisor Palczyk. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the team for your work on this. Again, I appreciate the gold standard that we continue to use,

[00:20:50] but I think I do have a couple of questions. So number one, we talk a lot about outreach. I think in your slide, number six, community outreach efforts. I don't see a lot of community engagement efforts, right?

[00:21:06] So when we talk about, I think about family liaisons in our schools, right? I think about our engagement framework that we're trying to improve and increase, I believe, under our chief equity officer and from NCS. So I'm curious, is that something we've looked into?

[00:21:25] Because I wonder, who are the older adults and people with disabilities who aren't engaged, who aren't responding, who aren't going to see our outreach? is that something that's been looked at yet it's a great question thank you for that and um you know given the time on the report um this particular area wasn't necessarily a space that i i dug deep into but i will i will share that that has been a focus of the work of the services committee they meet regularly and have really been working this year to work with our internal and external

[00:21:59] partners to learn more about ways to engage and how other organizations outreach to the community and learning more about how to best engage and reach those that we're really trying to connect with. So it is an area of interest and something that we continue to work on. Well, I would go beyond and say it's critical, right? So whether it's working with our faith community partners, I mean, we're getting better at it as a county, and we're still not there yet, but I would push just to say it's especially important as our aging population becomes more and more diverse and perhaps less connected to county services, county nonprofits, the county work, our offices.

[00:22:38] We'll never reach them, right? So how do we do that better? I think, to me, that would be pretty critical to focus on in the near future. And even our faith in action coordinator, there's quite a bit of opportunity, I believe, to be able to do that.

[00:22:56] Number two, I very much appreciate that we're doing the survey, and I do want to make sure that it is statistical and also representative, right? And so that's the continual work we need to do. I think it's great that there's an online version. I think I'm not doing it, but I think a lot of political polling is starting to look at new tools and AI tools and ways to ensure that, you know, we really are reaching more people.

[00:23:20] So I appreciate that CASOA is happening. What is the, and then to continue to look at other ways, I'd like to learn more about how the online survey is going to work and be studied. But then just a quick question, because budgets are tight.

[00:23:36] What is the approximate cost of doing the survey at this time? $91,000. Okay. Thank you. And that's one time for the full services for the survey? That's my understanding. Okay. Excellent. And then my only other one is I really appreciate the work on advanced care planning that you had in here.

[00:23:56] Not only for those who are in the know, but I recently had a friend's mom pass away and they realized they hadn't done any of that work, right? And so I do think, and it's something we don't often want to talk about, and I'm starting to see an economic divide in our older adult community, whether it's around housing, advanced planning, all of those things.

[00:24:19] So I don't know if we have a wider sort of strategy and, again, comes back to engagement. If we have a lot of resources in the county and the website is a tool, right? But what is our plan for better engaging, whether it's, again, through faith communities, libraries, community groups, even, you know, schools, I think, can be a target because they have grandparents, right?

[00:24:43] They have parents. And so I guess I really want to make sure that all these tools we create are really going to reach and hear back from our community to be listening to what's working, what's not, and what else is needed. That's the piece that I want to hear more about, older adults and our disability community.

[00:25:03] So I think those are things I hope we continue to focus on before we come back to the board. Thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you. Supervisor Luss. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've got two points, and I'll say, first, really appreciate the work that's being done to address scams and preventing economic distress to our older residents.

[00:25:27] As I'm saying this out loud, it's making my stomach turn that there are people who do so many horrible things to exploit our seniors, And it's so important that we're doing what we can to help them know when these sorts of activities are occurring so they can avoid being prey.

[00:25:47] And I guess this is unfortunately the reality of the situations that many cases are older residents who are making decisions that are not in their economic interest. So I appreciate the work that's being done. And I know we're going to talk a little bit more later, so I might have a comment following that presentation.

[00:26:06] And then the second area I wanted to maybe drill down a little bit is on services that help older adults stay in their housing. So I just acknowledge that this is an area that's also critically important as we think about having folks be able to continue to live in our community.

[00:26:27] And I know we're building together as the entity that we've listed here. I just wanted to, and I don't know if you have the answer here today, but just in terms of the types of improvements that we're providing to the residents, and also just thinking about the needs, do we have a sense of, are we able to meet the demand?

[00:26:49] What are some of the maybe additional points you'd like to share with us about that program? Because I see that one as being critically important as well. That's a great question. I think that in terms of some of the work that the Housing and Neighborhood Supports Committee has done around this, through the tool that I mentioned, the Consumer Resource Guide to Home Repair and Renovation, was an opportunity to highlight some of those resources that could supplement when adults who had repair and renovation done through the Home

[00:27:26] repair for the elderly program and needed additional supports that we could then refer them to this and our partners through Rebuilding Together really helped to look at those spaces where we could amplify an awareness there for these individuals that need more support.

[00:27:48] So I think there's definitely continued need, as you mentioned, and whether we're meeting that. I'm not sure that we could say we're meeting that. I'd have to look more closely at some of the information that we've reviewed together, but I'd be happy to get that to you. No, I'll say that's very helpful and be very interested in maybe understanding if there are unmet needs, what those unmet needs are. Thank you. Thank you. All right, great. Let's go to Supervisor Sizemore Heiser. Thank you, and I really appreciate this report. The one thing I really wanted that caught

[00:28:25] my attention that I would love to talk about and how we can maybe help support a little more is shared housing. We've talked a lot about housing this last year, and one of the things that caught my eye on the report on page 15 is the increasing number of older residents who are curious about shared housing options. Recently, I've been talking to a few groups and advocates and Mayor Catherine Reed because there's an informal shared housing community that's sort of sprung up. This is for persons with disabilities more than older adults, but it's parents buying homes in a very same neighborhood in the city of Fairfax. There's like 40 of them now for their

[00:29:04] adults with disabilities where they shared housing. It's near Mason. Often would reduce rent to a Mason student to help provide support, and it's grown organically, and I'm starting to get involved in my position as chair of housing to learn what they're doing, but I think that's a great model to look at, and there's some groups around the country for um older adults and i'm just wondering what what the county can do as to sort of help lift it up as an initiative maybe help facilitate making those connections you know there's a lot of older adults who are aging in place by themselves in larger houses who may benefit and probably a lot of students and other folks who are income limited who might benefit from a shared housing situation

[00:29:41] so just something to think about and maybe talk about and see how we can maybe stand up some sort of either a toolkit right or some sort of way to connect people so i just wanted to mention that for something to think about in the future. And if you have any thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them. Thank you so much for those comments.

[00:29:58] And another initiative that I didn't speak to in this report out was a consumer guide to home sharing, which is available on the Adult and Aging webpage. It is being translated into the top 10 languages spoken in Fairfax County as well.

[00:30:17] So that's a wonderful resource, a tool that had been developed at the previous 50-plus plan. So we have worked to make that available in other languages as well. I think that goes to my colleague's point about the engagement. We have so many resources here in Fairfax, but really getting them to the people, I think that's helpful.

[00:30:36] So thank you. I'm going to go find that and share it on my own social. So thank you. Thank you. Great. Very good. Well, thank you very much, Bethann. Thank you to my colleagues for questions and comments. Let's move on. We do have a deeper dive into one of the SHAPE initiatives, Stronger Memory.

[00:30:54] And we have with us from Goodwin Living, Jessica Fredrickson, who I believe has a few slides for us this morning. Yes, thank you. Honored to be here with you all today. I'm Jessica Fredrickson, Senior Director of Brain Health at Goodwin Living and grew up in Fairfax County.

[00:31:13] So very, very glad to be partnering with SHAPE and with Bethann and her team. To just introduce Stronger Memory, it was created to kind of meet this need that we see where we know our older adult population is growing, people are experiencing more cognitive challenges, and their older adults' biggest worry is where am I going to live and what is my cognition and health going to be?

[00:31:42] So Stronger Memory was really created to help empower older adults to do something positive for their own brain health that can improve their cognition, help people age in place longer. What it is, is a really simple curriculum of three activities, doing about 10 minutes of each exercise, reading aloud, writing by hand, and doing simple math, 10 minutes each, 30 minutes total, four to five days a week. We've partnered with George Mason University to do

[00:32:17] a lot of research on this. There are three published studies that show stronger memory, showed better, statistically significant, total cognitive improvement on the mini-MOCA after 12 weeks of doing stronger memory. And if you're not familiar with what the mini-MOCA is, It's one of those tests that starts with, I'm going to, you know, have you name, repeat these five words after me, and then I'm going to ask you those questions again at the end.

[00:32:50] What are those five words? And in between, you have to do some questions on orientation. You have to think of as many words as you can that start with a certain letter of the alphabet, and then at the end, remember those five words. What the research showed is that specifically where we saw the most improvement was people being able to remember those five words from the beginning.

[00:33:16] Again, more of those five words were able to be remembered in those post-tests. And so that was really exciting to see. We also saw with that research that individuals who were scoring as possibly having some mild cognitive impairment or MCI, we're seeing a greater improvement and actually bumping up to that healthy brain range, which was exciting. Stronger memory is really adaptable. It can be done independently in pairs or in groups. Our follow-up study with George Mason University did

[00:33:55] show that when you add a social component, you have a greater benefit. So if you'll go to the next slide, that brings us to a lot of our work with the SHAPE P committee. And we partnered with Fairfax County to launch Stronger Memory in senior centers. We started in our pilot year with two senior centers, and we were very hands-on. And those senior centers really took the program and adapted it. We worked with Bethann and her team to do DEIB evaluation, make sure it was really

[00:34:30] meeting the needs of Fairfax County seniors and demographics. And to date, we are now in all 14 senior centers across Fairfax County. On average, there are about 10 to 15 participants per senior center per cohort. And we've done in all 14, they've done at least three rounds of this 12-week programming to date. And it is included in their goals as a requirement that they do

[00:35:03] two to three cohorts, two to three of those 12-week cohorts a year of Stronger Memory. So we have some that are now entering their second year of doing Stronger Memory. If you'll go to the next slide. So just to highlight a few of the really exciting efforts that have come about with Stronger Memory just because of this Fairfax shape collaboration. Thanks to Fairfax County, we were able to translate Stronger Memory into eight languages. Fairfax County actually

[00:35:39] translated and paid for the translation into Spanish, Amharic, Farsi, Korean, Chinese simplified, and Chinese traditional after speaking with the senior centers and finding out what languages they most needed. We've since used that same translation company to translate it into Japanese as well. And this has been really excellent because we are able to offer these thanks to the generosity of Fairfax County, not only to the senior centers, but these languages are also available for free download on the Stronger Memory website for anyone who might be interested

[00:36:18] in Stronger Memory that speaks these languages. Staff and participants have described Stronger Memory as a really clear success. Linconia Senior Center is one of our first senior centers that launched Stronger Memory, and they say they regularly have 35 participants in their Stronger Memory sessions every day. So really a great success. Seniors are engaged. They want to come to this. And the senior center teams and staff have really gone above and beyond to make this

[00:36:55] part of their programming, and then also to be able to adapt it and customize it based on their needs. And participants have shared some real-life examples of cognitive gains, like remembering shopping lists, recalling pins and passwords, and increased social engagement and confidence.

[00:37:16] And the senior center staff are saying that individuals are engaged through those 12 weeks where there are brain health lessons that kind of accompany different topics that teach about general brain health in addition to stronger memory, but many of them want to find a way to continue.

[00:37:36] they're continuing to do the exercises beyond those 12 weeks, which is great. That's the goal, is that we're really coming around people so they can build this habit, and then they're more aware of brain health, things they can do to improve their cognition long term. Next slide, please.

[00:37:57] Looking ahead, we are working this year to expand a stronger memory to the Fairfax County libraries. And we've really designed three core models working with the library team and Marina at the libraries and Bethann and her team and the SHAPE committee as well. There's going to be a pilot of a facilitated group model similar to senior centers where stronger memory actually becomes part of the library programming. We're also working on developing stronger memory kits

[00:38:30] for circulation. So these will have kind of reusable items and prompts and activities that encourage this reading aloud, writing by hand, and the simple math. Those will be, we're getting them ready to hopefully add into circulation around September, October in collaboration with Dementia-Friendly Fairfax and some partnerships that we're doing with some sensory dementia-friendly kits there. And then a third option for the libraries is stronger memory

[00:39:05] stations. So looking at what would it look like if we just set up a spot in the library where there's a physical place, participants and caregivers can pick up materials on a regular basis to use in the library, or if it is, you know, packets of exercises they could take home and use. And we are working on, we've done facilitator training with a team member at Dolly Madison Library. They were already eager to start right as we were having the conversation

[00:39:38] with the SHAPE committee about working in libraries. And so they are going to be launching a stronger memory group at that library that will meet weekly. And we'll learn from that and get additional feedback with the goal of sharing with more libraries in the future. All right. All right. Thank you very much, Jessica.

[00:40:04] Very helpful. This really shows, I think, the implementation of one of the many shape initiatives that are underway and provides an opportunity for folks to explore this a little more. Mr. Chairman, do you have? Yeah, it's a wonderful program.

[00:40:20] A couple of questions that I have. The kits, it's not clear in here, but the kits will also be in the eight languages that were mentioned earlier? Yes. Some of the math might be – we will have elements of the kits.

[00:40:38] The math might be a reusable tool, something with counting, but we can make sure we have instructions of how to use that in all the languages. Okay, and that actually goes to my second question. You mentioned this being available online. First, I love that it's being formally done in our county facilities, you know, our senior centers and libraries.

[00:40:58] But you also mentioned it was online. And so I'm wondering, do we have any way to track who is accessing that and to get any feedback on how the people who are doing it independently are faring through the program in the same way that we can track the folks who are engaged at our county facilities?

[00:41:16] That's a great question. We are working on some more in-depth tracking for the program. Right now, we track individuals who download the program, and we do ask them to tell us where they heard about the program, so we could certainly look at that and pull some data there.

[00:41:37] We do send out some surveys. I will say what we have seen with Fairfax County, they've been really rigorous at doing doing participant surveys and just getting some general satisfaction. And we are seeing that, I think, because of that group model, people are sticking with it a little bit more closely than people we talk to who are doing it on their own.

[00:42:02] Okay. And my last question is, we have partnered through our libraries and senior centers, but I'm wondering, you know, a lot of residents in Fairfax County also live in, as you know, private communities, 50-plus communities. And I'm just curious as to whether the current partnership we have with Fairfax County allows us to extend that to facilities that are non-county operated and how we might be able to do that.

[00:42:30] Absolutely. So Stronger Memory was developed by Goodwin Living and is something that we offer for free to partners all around the country. We do have some non-government partners in Fairfax County. We would love to grow that and would love to make that part of shape.

[00:42:49] And we do a lot of outreach currently with the dementia-friendly Fairfax side. I chair that committee with Fairfax County staff. And I think we see these two things as working in tandem with some of our partners.

[00:43:06] So would be glad to work to extend it to additional places in Fairfax County. I think that would be great, including I'm thinking of our nonprofit partners and others who serve this population and may not be aware of this, of the availability of this.

[00:43:24] And then so many of our communities that are, you know, 50 plus throughout the county that may or may not be aware of it. And so I, you know, this this is the type of tool that I think is best used or best implemented when it's shared by a trusted partner with our 50 plus community.

[00:43:43] And obviously, when you walk in a library or a senior center, we are a trusted partner. But so many individuals don't have that opportunity. And how we're reaching them as residents of Fairfax County through these other mechanisms, I think, is going to be important moving forward.

[00:43:59] But this is wonderful work. So thank you. Thank you. All right. Very good. I saw a bunch of hands pop up. So we're just going to come down the line this way. Supervisor Stork. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you very much. I'm very excited, very supportive.

[00:44:15] I think this is crucial to how we not only connect and help seniors with their memory and brain power, if you will, but also the socialization part of that. I mean, there's so many elements here that really are win-wins, and so I'm very, very pleased to see that and see how we're integrating that into our own senior programs.

[00:44:34] One of the things that I didn't see in here, and I wanted to see if you all have looked at it and had considered how to integrate that is movement or exercise or activity. I mean, there's tons of research. I mean, literally that the brain portion of this is huge, but the movement part of this, the exercise part of this is equally critical and maybe even more powerful than some of the brain. Can you maybe talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. You're you are absolutely right. Exercise and movement is the best thing you can do for your brain health.

[00:45:11] With Stronger Memory, we picked these three exercises because there is research that they benefit the brain. They're also closer to things that people might already be doing. It is really challenging to modify exercise and modify diet. Those are some of the bigger challenges. So we view Stronger Memory as a good entry point to learning about brain health. And in Stronger Memory, we do have a series of lessons that the senior centers can use in their weekly

[00:45:46] meetings that go through brain health education. Some of it is, okay, why are we doing this exercise? What does reading aloud do for your brain? What does writing and math? And then understanding a little bit about, okay, how to build a habit. What brain healthy habit do you want to do? And then we dive into the six pillars of brain health, which a lot of, you know, AARP has a lot of resources on that, Cleveland Clinic, and one of those is exercise. And so we do share that education, that exercise is one of the most important things people can do for their brain

[00:46:23] health. I think we certainly could look at with our work with the senior centers, especially, You know, they are also offering programs that encourage movement. So maybe partnering with them to see if there's a way we can encourage people who are coming to stronger memory.

[00:46:40] Maybe there's an informational resource we could have available. But we try to provide that education, but make this a really easy entry point. I'm taking nothing away from what's here. This is wonderful. There's even more recent research last few years that talk about something called extra kinds, which is really something that helps to strengthen the blood-brain barrier, which is a key part of dementia and really strengthening.

[00:47:06] So, I mean, there's a lot here, and I know this is a key part of it, but obviously excellent movement and quality of food, nutrition is the other part. But thank you very much. Absolutely. So Supervisor Stork might volunteer to be a role model in what he's just talking. I don't know.

[00:47:22] I love that. As you said, habits are crucial, and we all have challenges with keeping habits, right? Yes. Or at least good habits. Yes. Thank you. Supervisor Palczyk. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[00:47:37] Thank you again, Jessica. This is really fabulous. It's something that was, I think, an example of not created by the county, right, happening in the county with a private, independent, nonprofit provider, and being able to share that across. Not everything has to be created, right, by the county.

[00:47:54] I really love that this is coming from Goodwin. It's funny, I'm going in a slightly different question and direction. I believe there's also research showing that the use of multiple languages is also helpful for the brain.

[00:48:10] And so rather than just translating our materials, has Goodwin been able, I assume you also and Goodwin Living have at this point seniors who are dual, triple, multiple language speakers. I know with my dad, that's something we've done a lot to try to enhance his brain is to be able to use those languages. So I don't know if that's something you've looked at being in such a multilingual community. Yeah, absolutely. I think so what stronger memory does to get a little neurosciency, we are really working on the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your

[00:48:44] brain right behind your forehead that focuses on working memory and recall, what learning languages does is it works something called neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to learn new information, to adapt. If you have a fall, if you just, I don't know, your day isn't going the way it should and you need to adjust mentally, neuroplasticity helps us learn new things. So we don't include learning new languages as part of the stronger memory curriculum per se,

[00:49:17] But we do have a lot of individuals who do enjoy that, and we definitely encourage that as a brain-healthy activity to do. Some individuals, we've had some participants, just anecdotally, who they speak two languages or spoke two languages, but it's one maybe they haven't really practiced or spoken in a while.

[00:49:44] That's what I was thinking. Yes. So then they go back to that with the writing and maybe even with the reading aloud, but especially with the writing. And that's been really beneficial because it definitely adds a little bit more of that brain engagement. But it also really seems to motivate people because if they are really enjoying the activity, enjoying what they're writing, enjoying, you know, speaking or writing in that other language that they don't have an opportunity to use as much, that can really keep them doing the habit and build that commitment.

[00:50:21] Oh, that's exciting. That's what I was wondering about, whether it's, you know, singing or speaking. I know we hear a lot of the singing in multiple languages in our senior center. And I know that's not just joyful, but really good for the brain as well. So, no, it's very exciting. And I was going to say, those of us who need a little boost to keep our bodies moving, my teacher just said little snacks, right?

[00:50:42] Just go on a little 15-minute snack. and to me that made such a big difference you don't have to go on a half hour every time you go and work out just a 15 minute snack so absolutely i think that's something all of us can do in our busy lives but very much appreciate the work that you're doing so thank you all right very good um okay supervisor jimenez thank you mr chairman and jessica great to see you i was actually just at goodwin house last week so oh wonderful yeah always always a pleasure and as many of you know mason district actually has the most seniors of any district and so obviously these issues are quite important and looking at the success that the Lincolnia Senior Center has had

[00:51:20] with this program is very exciting. I have a quick question. When you, after the program is done, after the 12 weeks, are there any follow-up? We have with some of our research studies done follow-up with the senior centers. I think it varies a little bit by senior center. Some of the senior centers will do the 12 weeks, and then when they launch the next 12-week session, many of the individuals who were in the last one might choose to come and join again,

[00:51:53] but then others might have more of an informal follow-up with individuals who want to continue where they're not doing the as structured of a lesson, but they are kind of doing a little bit of a brain health, maybe fact or news article, and still encouraging each other. I think it definitely builds connections with the senior centers and the older adults themselves. Yeah.

[00:52:25] Yeah, I think giving our seniors the tools that they can then grow with, grow on, is extremely important. And quickly to touch on something that Supervisor Stork was talking about, and Supervisor Paul Chekhov also mentioned, you know, different ways to incorporate this stronger memory.

[00:52:42] And I recently wrote about how art is a wonderful way to strengthen our memory. It not only builds community, but it also, you know, helps amplify and kind of move the memory core. So I think that's extremely important.

[00:52:58] Obviously, we know that we've talked about in different committees the fact that scams are on the increase by 400 percent throughout the county. Obviously, this is a national crisis, and so I think that ways in which we can incorporate, for example, art, going back to art, making it more of a community can actually help in so many different ways around scams and around, obviously, memory loss.

[00:53:20] So I'm really excited about this program and the work that's being done by Goodwin House. So thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Supervisor Jimenez. And by the way, my AI tool tells me that Mason is neck and neck with Mount Vernon on the numbers. You guys are close.

[00:53:38] Don't trust everything you see on AI. Absolutely. Okay, let's go to Supervisor Bierman, and then we'll move on to our last presentation. Well, everyone knows the coolest seniors live in the Drainsville District, but that's okay. I'll be as quick as possible.

[00:53:57] I don't want to put anybody on the spot, but the question I always have is what does success look like? So what are the metrics or the measures, especially when we're expanding this program into libraries? What kind of participation do we want to see? That builds on the question that Supervisor Palachuk was asking earlier and Chairman McKay.

[00:54:16] The numbers with senior centers in all 14 senior centers, 10 to 15 participants a week, three rounds, you do the numbers, you see that it's building. But as we move into libraries, it would be great to set some goals for how many libraries we're in, how many participants are in those libraries, and then come back in a year and set the ambitious goal and try to meet it and use that as a tool to try and engage more people.

[00:54:41] This seems like a really good opportunity for a program that we're bringing to scale, and we want to make sure that that is a key component of our broader engagement strategy. Thank you. Very good. Yes, please, Jessica. Thank you for that. I think our model with libraries right now, we are taking the similar approach we did to the senior centers where, you know, with the senior centers, we piloted in two and kind of got some sense of how many participants and any adjustments we needed to make.

[00:55:11] And it also let us know, okay, we need this in a lot of different languages. Right now, our senior center or our library work, we're piloting in one library. I think once we get one cohort down there, we'll be able to make some goals of, okay, what does participation look like in multiple libraries?

[00:55:31] And also with the circulation kits, what is kind of the usage there, starting small and then seeing, okay, what kind of marketing do we need to do or education so that people know this is a resource, absolutely. But happy to put those goals in there so we can meet them or we can learn what else we need to do so we can.

[00:55:53] Thank you. Terrific, and glad you're starting at the Dolly Madison Library. It's a great library. Thank you. All right, very good. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate you being here and talking with us about this program. Really good stuff. We do have one more item on the agenda, and that is from our Consumer Protection Commission.

[00:56:13] We have the chair of the commission, Jason, is going to be presenting, got a few slides for us. This is a topic that we have talked about several times in this committee. I do just want to say right from the get-go, I know it's not just older adults that are victims of scams.

[00:56:30] We realize that, but older adults are often targeted and also sometimes the victims of scams. So we very much appreciate everything that you've been doing, and I know Supervisor Stork had a board matter. uh relating to this a little while ago so uh look forward to your presentation and then the discussion afterwards so take it away great thank you chair alcorn and chairman mckay appreciate everybody for giving me a chance to give you an update on the pause question protect initiative that i had a chance to speak with you about last summer and our efforts to expand that

[00:57:06] at your encouragement into a regional effort next slide please first just as a quick recap and refresher. Back in early 2024, the commission began to explore the issue of scams and financial fraud in the county. And one thing we noticed was that there was a tremendous amount of activity.

[00:57:26] You've heard some of it discussed here. Different parts of the county, even stakeholders outside of the county government, all really focused and keenly engaged on helping to do something to reduce the number of scams. But there didn't seem to be that consistent through thread, that common piece of fabric tying all of those efforts together in a way that was cohesive and that would have the best effort and best chance of really resonating with seniors and everybody, like you said, Chair Alcorn, who could be a victim of scams. So we looked to inspiration from a campaign that was a national campaign developed in the United Kingdom. It was called Take Five

[00:58:03] to stop fraud. Why did we like that? It was short. It was memorable. And it was very, very easy and simple. Why does that matter? Because there are a whole lot of scams, new ones being developed every day. To try to sit down with this room or a senior center and try to educate them on the 30, 40 different types of scams that might be current today but will probably be outdated by tomorrow seemed like a losing proposition. And so we thought, well, if it was good enough to try nationwide in the UK. Let's see if we can model that here in Fairfax County. And that's where we landed on pause, question, protect. With the help of the Department of Cable and Consumer Services

[00:58:41] and the Consumer Affairs team, we were able to workshop some ideas and some design. You can see the final work product that Rebecca's design team was able to put together for us. And we've been very excited to have that rolling out in a limited capacity in the county.

[00:58:58] I know I've seen it, and I get just so thrilled when I see it appear in some of your newsletters that I subscribe to, and also when suddenly I'll see it appear on the Mount Vernon Police's nextdoor.com. I'll see the iconography show up, and that's just really wonderful.

[00:59:14] And, of course, fast forward a little bit. In March, Supervisor Stork, thank you for championing the board matter. Again, just what was that about, right? the idea there was support that regional push and direct the Office of Public Affairs to provide the strategic communications to back that here in Fairfax County. And of course, when I did have a chance to be here last summer, your directive was loud and clear, which was, hey, there's scams in Fairfax County, but they are not limited to our geographic boundaries. Can you make this a regional Initiative. So if I could get the next slide, please. So since then, I took your marching orders

[00:59:54] and with the first order and the assistance of Supervisor Lusk was able to make contact with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Then just in a grassroots effort where I had a network or was able to find connections into individual jurisdictions, did a lot of one-on-one meetings to talk about what we've done here in Fairfax, talk about pause, question, protect, how it came to be a little bit more of an expansive version of what I just shared with you now. And the interest and excitement was tremendous. All of the jurisdictions that I talked to, again, were unique here in Fairfax because we have a commission

[01:00:31] like the CPC. Not every jurisdiction in our area has that. And so, you know, there's not a lot of resources dedicated to focusing on issues like this, let alone developing campaigns over a nearly two-year period. So I was able to get a core group of jurisdictions in our area to say, you know what, we would love to get together for an in-person meeting. And that also included some outreach to the United States Secret Service. When they heard what we were doing here in Fairfax, they were extremely excited. They had been trying and struggling to get inside the federal government some sort of a cohesive strategy on scams. And I think what appealed to them was, wow, this is

[01:01:11] happening right in our own backyard. How can we help? So they were very anxious to host a regional convening, which took place on April 9th. It was hosted by us, by the Secret Service, and the COG. We had 45 attendees on this slide. It's a little tough to see on the screen, but hopefully you have the printout in front of you. We had great coverage and attendance, a lot of law enforcement, a lot of consumer services groups from jurisdictions around our area. My objectives going into that were to secure support for the pause question protect framework and get everybody aligned on that as

[01:01:46] the basis and the foundation for what we could do as a region. From there, surface any concerns. Obviously, right away, people began asking the key question, what resources do we have to bring to bear on that? And then, of course, to get each jurisdiction to commit to being a part of a working group to actually build and design and execute on this. The core building blocks of our message to the different jurisdictions where, look, we've got this framework. It's rolling out in Fairfax County. That means you don't have to do the hard work. We've already put in two years of effort to build this for you. It's almost turnkey. Obviously, that resonated very well. And then, of course,

[01:02:24] you know, distribution. How do we do this? Where can we start? There's a lot of ways to do this that are easy, low effort, channels you already control, social media, print. Here in Fairfax, You know, we've got Golden Gazette, we've got Facebook pages, you know, lots of different opportunities that don't require reinventing the wheel or creating new processes or services.

[01:02:45] And then let's skip ahead to the next slide, because all of this is in service of what we are hoping to achieve, which is a fall 2026 regional launch of this initiative. This slide, actually, planning for a May meeting, I say my first bullet point, we actually had that meeting of that working group.

[01:03:03] And so I can give you a much more recent update on that. We were supported not only by the jurisdictions that attended, but also we had the FBI Washington Field Office and the U.S. Secret Service. They continue to be very excited and look forward to amplifying what we're trying to do here.

[01:03:20] Right out of the gate, we started talking about building a website, identifying resources that the jurisdictions, admittedly doing a little hat in hand, saying, hey, what do folks have that they can bring to bear that isn't going to be a significant cost for us to get this off the ground. I was able to share the work that our consumer affairs team has already done to build out the images that I showed you previously, also some PowerPoint templates where you could just swap out the Fairfax County logo for your county's logo, and you're off to the races. But we got great excitement and encouragement. Montgomery County said they have in-house

[01:03:56] translation services that they can offer. We've already done some translating here in Fairfax County. They also have a podcast studio. Of course, we have a great television facility here. I've recorded a PSA on Pause Question Protect in the past. So we're starting to put together a toolkit and a set of resources that I think will get us to that fall 2026 launch. So that's what's happening at the regional level. We're going to be continuing to meet once a month, continuing to bring those resources to bear just yesterday I met with the Alexandria City content design team who are going to be taking a first pass at building out what

[01:04:34] a website could look like what social media cards could look like what flyers could look like using the pause question protect messaging framework I've already done a little bit of field testing at supervisor stork senior day recently of the pause question protect message happy to share more about that but I think it was very, very well received. Got a lot of great engagement from the seniors in the room on that. Okay, now let's bring it home. So what is going on in Fairfax? So as I mentioned, as a result of the board matter, you all unanimously approved. The Office of Public Affairs has shared a strategy framework with the Department of Cable and Consumer Services. We had

[01:05:14] a chance to look at it briefly at our last Consumer Protection Commission meeting. We still need to develop the plan to execute against that, but it's a starting point. So the OPA is, I'm excited to work with them to flesh that out. You know, resourcing and prioritization continues to be something where you will hear from me every chance I get to encourage you to think about, look, if we want to be able to do this and support a regional effort, whatever that looks like, if there is, I'll be bold to say, carryover funding, whatever you're able to find to help us support

[01:05:49] this because, you know, the COG doesn't have a set aside to build this out. Same with the other jurisdictions. So those are questions that are inevitable. And you'll probably be hearing from me again to say, hey, what can we do to really brand this and take this to a broader level?

[01:06:05] Because really the key is visibility. It's getting this message in front of as many people as possible, seniors and otherwise, opportunities to talk to senior events, to just get flyers. Again, why? Because it's just so simple. The more we can repeat it, the more this can be visible in libraries, through social media, through whatever channel is the most effective way to reach seniors and others who could benefit from just getting that little earworm memory bug into their mind to pause, question, and protect. What does that mean? Hang on. This seems too good to be true.

[01:06:37] Why is this happening to me? Why are they asking me to pay them in gift cards or crypto? That doesn't make sense. Why would my nephew ask me to do that? But more challenges remain. You know, we're here at the county level, I would say we're at about step one to 1.5 in terms of what our vision is at the commission for how we can weave this into the fabric. Obviously, we've got Beth Ann, we've got Melissa with Silver Shield. So we've got great partners and resources where now it's just a matter of making sure, you know, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. And that's very much how I see all of the different activities going on in the county and how we can really,

[01:07:14] just with some fine-tuning and closer collaboration, really do our part here in Fairfax in support of the broader regional effort that you all asked us to champion. So with that, I'll stop and look forward to your questions. Thank you very much, Jason, for your leadership on this, and thank you for listening to the board, you know, last summer and acting on it. The regional push was, I know several board members had articulated that at the last meeting where you spoke and also I just want to remind everybody this is one of several pieces relating

[01:07:51] to scams you know we can do a good amount at the local level at the regional level which I know you've been focused on recently there's a lot that can be done and we've also put in our legislative program both at the state and federal level asking for our state and federal partners to help with this.

[01:08:11] As you mentioned, many of these do not stay within a jurisdiction, that these are cross-jurisdictional crimes, if you will. So, again, thank you for your leadership. Turn it over to the chairman. Yeah, ditto that, Jason.

[01:08:29] Well done. And I do really appreciate the reach out to COG, but more importantly, all the stakeholders that participated. You know, I guess the main question I have, was there any pushback from any of those stakeholders? I mean, they came enthusiastic. We know this problem exists all over the world, so I don't think anyone walked into the room suspect of whether this was a problem.

[01:08:50] But were they suspect at all of what we were trying to do in terms of the very simple messaging? On that part of it, no, sir. There wasn't any pushback. When I went into that meeting, I was more so looking for pushback in the lens of, well, why should we just be adopting this?

[01:09:08] Or, well, what can we do to tweak it to our own communities? To which it was a very easy question to answer, which was, that's the beauty of this, right? I mean, as long as we're all aligned around the framework and the visual identity, you use it how best you need to reach your constituents.

[01:09:25] And so once that began to sink in, the heads started nodding in the appropriate way, and everybody got very excited and started jumping three steps ahead of where we were just in that first meeting, talking about bus billboards and things like, hang on, one step at a time, let's just work on getting a visual identity first.

[01:09:44] And so, no, we didn't really get that, any hard substantive pushback. It was mostly appreciative of the work that we'd done to, you know, that's two years of time that they didn't need to invest. Yeah. And I think, you know, sometimes as simple as this messaging looks, the simpler it is, sometimes the harder it is to get there to that simple message.

[01:10:06] And so I think the value in this is the uniformity of that piece of it. You know, how it gets distributed can vary by community, depending on, you know, what those community needs are. But in terms of the simple graphics, the simple message, if those things can be uniform, we have so many people in Fairfax County that travel in and out of the county into a lot of these other jurisdictions that were mentioned here as partners.

[01:10:31] And if they're seeing that same thing everywhere they go, to your earlier point, in the same type of format, that's going to be really powerful. And, you know, we can do all we want in Fairfax County, but ultimately – and this is a good position for the county to lead in.

[01:10:48] But ultimately, if this is not braced as a regional initiative that people see everywhere they go, it's going to be really hard to drill into people's minds. And I, for one, know how hard it is to come up with a very simple message that everyone can embrace.

[01:11:03] And so we may be at 1.5 in terms of the development of this. We're probably further than that, just coming up with a concept that people agree on. The resources piece, you know, I'm looking forward to hearing more about that. I mean, what would we do with that?

[01:11:20] How does that intersect with what the contributions and support could be from some of these regional entities? And as Chairman Alcorn mentioned, I mean, we put that into our legislative and state packages for a reason and try to get some state and federal support and resources to also help these very specific type of things that you're working on.

[01:11:39] And so I look forward to seeing kind of a more formal, hey, this is what we would do if we had X, and kind of give us some tiers so that we not only can look internally, but also can look at some of these other stakeholders who are participating to be supporting this regional initiative, too.

[01:11:56] But I think we're further than 1.5, but I'm also eternal optimist. but I also know that we still have a long way to go to get this messaging out and in the simplest, most uniform way we possibly can. So thank you for all your work on it. Thank you, sir.

[01:12:11] Great. Very good. Did you want to say anything, Jason? All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Supervisor Stork and then Supervisor Lusk. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very much, Jason. I think this is a wonderful initiative. I think, like the chairman and chairmen have said, it's a build process, and we need to keep building on it.

[01:12:34] But I particularly wanted to thank you and the Consumer Protection Commission. Consumer Protection Commission has been one of our committees for a long, long time. I do not remember this kind of really active, really focused, you know, really engaged and really strong push to address what we know is a crucial problem in our community.

[01:12:59] And I know that a key part of that is your own huge amount of time that you spent on this, probably thousands of hours at this point, but the committee itself, your engagement, what you all have identified as we can make a difference here, and I've worked hard to do just that.

[01:13:16] And I particularly wanted to highlight that because the commission has been there a long time, but I don't recall any specific initiatives before this that really have gotten kind of generated this much engagement and collective action.

[01:13:32] And I think that's a key part of what we can do and the leadership that the commission has shown I think are all very, very positive ones. So I thank you and the committee members themselves for taking this initiative and moving this along. So thank you. Great. Supervisor Lusk.

[01:13:48] So thank you very much supervisor stork. You stole some of my thunder I wanted to say the same thing and that is really appreciate the effort that you have undertaken here It's going to make a difference. It's so important and vital particularly for those that are seniors But then for others who are also being victimized in the community The thing I wanted to say is I continue to serve on COG. So if there are issues that pertain to COG going forward please feel free to reach back to me.

[01:14:17] I'm happy to get engaged on those because I think, as the chairmen both have said, this is a regional issue. We've got to obviously have participation and engagement from COG as we move forward. So just keep that in mind. So thank you very much. Thank you. Okay.

[01:14:32] Supervisor Sizemore-Heiser. Thank you. I really appreciate this work. I think it's great work. I had a question. I know I'm coming new to this work. When you're developing the messaging, I know you talked about something out of England that they've been using. And I agree very much on the simple unified messaging. I think that's crucial, right? You know, you have to hear the same thing seven times before it sinks in.

[01:14:56] Did you work, what stakeholder groups have you worked with in terms of hearing the voice of the people that we're most trying to target? I mean, scams, as we said, affect everybody, but there are certain groups, and I would say seniors and perhaps certain groups with people with disabilities, right, impact, you know, are more susceptible to that. So have you worked with those groups in terms of helping streamline the messaging that maybe resonates most with them?

[01:15:21] Yeah, no, great question. And during that 18 to 24-month period where we were developing the initiative, yes, absolutely, we brought into the commission a number of stakeholders from both inside and outside the county. So that included, you know, Silver Shield. Thankfully, you know, we've got so much great insights already pre-baked within the county.

[01:15:44] We had the police department come in. We had Department of Family Services come in, Office of Public Affairs. So that was just a little bit of a glimpse of the internal stakeholders. From external, we brought in Capital One, for example. We brought in a nonprofit group called the Identity Theft Resource Center that is a frontline victim assistance nonprofit to help us understand what they see in real day-to-day interaction with scam victims.

[01:16:13] And all of that helped inform our thinking around and how we eventually landed on the short and sweet three-word approach to this. So, yes, ma'am, absolutely. You know, it's nice to have a focus group of 11 commissioners, but still we need to get smart, and we've got a lot of those resources here in the county government and just in our county stakeholders.

[01:16:35] And I appreciate that. And I don't know if you brought in, I know you have the Older Adults Commission, but if you brought in specifically people who work with the intellectual and developmental disabled community, because sometimes how they hear things is different. And so I didn't hear that in the list. I know you only mentioned a few stakeholders, but that's something, because that is another population that's significantly at risk for scams.

[01:16:56] And the way, sometimes we need to hear directly from the people who are hearing it or the center of it to see how it comes across to them. So I would just encourage as you go forward to make sure that perspective is also heard because it's another group and how an older adult hears something based on their life experience and kind of where they are is different than how someone with a developmental disability might hear something.

[01:17:17] So just my two cents on that piece. Thank you. All right. Very good. Well, thank you very much to my colleagues, to all the speakers. Very good discussion. Appreciate the excellent information we saw today. and also for our great folks at the Commission on Aging for being here and helping keep all this moving forward.

[01:17:38] We have a few minutes now before our next meeting, so I guess we get about a seven-minute break. So we're adjourned.

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