What Connection Can Do When Isolation Takes Over: One Senior’s Story
By Sarah Hillios NP, Element Care | November 6, 2026
Editor’s note: Sarah Hillios, NP, works closely with Eduardo Cordero as part of his care team at Element Care’s PACE program. This column recounts his experience based on their conversations, and Eduardo has given permission for his name, story and quotations to be published.
Every fall, PACE organizations across the country observe National PACE Month. PACE, the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, is a Medicare and Medicaid model built for older adults who qualify for nursing home-level care but can safely continue living at home with the right support. Rather than moving into a facility, participants receive medical care, therapies, social services, transportation, meals and day programming through one coordinated team. The goal is to keep people in their own homes and communities instead of moving them into a nursing home or the emergency room.
These services are easy to list, but the impact can be harder to picture. The model’s real meaning shows up in the details of someone’s day-to-day life, as it did for Eduardo Cordero, for whom PACE became a lifeline when isolation took over.
Eduardo’s Story
I met Eduardo Cordero in March, when he joined our program at Element Care, and his experience reflects something that we see often in geriatric care. Social withdrawal can act as a serious health risk on its own, with effects that extend beyond the discomfort of being alone.
Depression and anxiety in older adults don’t always look the way people expect, such as a textbook description of low mood. Instead, these conditions can show up as fatigue, changes in sleep or appetite, irritability, new physical pain and memory concerns. They can also present as a participant who stops coming to meals or activities, which is why an interdisciplinary care team matters. When primary care, nursing, social work, behavioral health, rehab therapy and activities staff are all working from the same plan, it’s easier to notice those small shifts in behavior rather than to dismiss them as “just aging.”
The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 15% of adults aged 70 and older live with a mental disorder, most commonly anxiety or depression, and identifies loneliness and social isolation as key risk factors for those conditions in later life. This shows up as patients who’ve lost a spouse, job and nearby family and friends — the informal networks that used to structure their days and give them a reason to engage with the world.
For Eduardo, who left behind a tightly connected family in Mexico and had few local ties to replace it, that loss was steep.
“I came to this country from Mexico, where I had a close family and people around me all the time,” he said. “In Massachusetts, I had no family nearby, very few friends, and long stretches of days with no one to talk to.”
He described the feeling as physical as much as emotional: “It’s like waking up every morning feeling like I had a hangover, even though I never drank. I didn’t want to do anything, not even shower, listen to music or watch TV.” The toll was severe enough that he went to the hospital more than five times a year, and staff there started to recognize him.
Congress has started to take this more seriously. Earlier this year, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chris Murphy introduced the Addressing Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults (SILO) Act, which would provide roughly $62.5 million annually to area agencies on aging and community organizations for staff training, outreach and program evaluation aimed at reducing isolation among seniors and people with disabilities. It’s a bet that loneliness is a healthcare problem worth investing in, instead of a quality-of-life issue for someone else to handle.
No single program gets credit for Eduardo’s improvement, and the path to progress hasn’t been a straight line. What changed was that he had a routine to keep and a team that noticed when something was off. What I can say is that Eduardo was willing to accept help when it was offered, and his willingness, combined with consistent structure and genuine relationships, changed his day-to-day life. He found out about Element Care’s PACE program through a social worker and admits he was hesitant at first.
“I’d been let down before and didn’t have much energy left to try something new,” he said.
But something shifted once he started the program.
“I started feeling something change almost as soon as I walked in,” he said.
Now he comes five days a week, works out on the stationary bike in our rehab gym, gets meals delivered, receives nursing visits and help with personal care, and has someone who sits and talks with him at home and another who goes grocery shopping with him. He’s returned to things he’d stopped doing entirely, including design, working with Photoshop and listening to music.
“A friend of mine saw me recently and started crying, because she saw how much I’d changed,” he said.
When I started working with him, Eduardo was quiet and withdrawn. Over time, I’ve watched him become engaged, expressive and a source of energy in the room. Seeing that change has been one of the more meaningful parts of my work at Element Care.
What Eduardo’s Story Reveals About the Value of Connection
Eduardo’s story puts a face on something people usually hear about in the abstract. The senior who stops answering the phone. The missed call that nobody follows up on. Connection gave Eduardo a routine to keep and a team that noticed when something changed, which became a reason to get up in the morning.
Congress is weighing how much to invest in this work nationally. We’d ask people to remember what that structure means for someone like Eduardo. Our programs give people somewhere to go five days a week and staff who notice when they don’t show up. For someone who’s stopped expecting anyone to notice, connection can be the one thing that pulls them back.
