WASHINGTON, DC, March 8, 2017 – At its first-ever Congressional dinner tonight, UsAgainstAlzheimer’s will honor Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Mark Warner (D-VA) for their deep commitment to making significant progress in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. The dinner will celebrate and energize continued across-the-aisle leadership that acknowledges Alzheimer’s as a national health menace demanding bold and swift decision-making and actions.
Among her many contributions to the fight, Capito, who lost both of her parents to Alzheimer’s, has championed legislation to support caregivers of Medicare enrollees, recognizing the toll that Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias have on the millions of caregivers in the United States, as well as its ballooning cost to Medicare and Medicaid. Warner, whose mother died of Alzheimer’s after suffering with the disease for 10 years, has been a passionate leader of the Senate Alzheimer’s Task Force and has also been active in care delivery and related issues.
UsAgainstAlzheimer’s has called upon Capito and Warner, and their Republican and Democratic colleagues, to build and sustain Alzheimer’s-related momentum in Congress and focus on a few key priorities. Among them: to include $2 billion for Alzheimer’s disease research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) within the Fiscal Year 2018 budget and continue to advance the Medicare benefit that will provide interventions that maximize the ability of the family caregiver to keep their beneficiary at home and limit and delay use of the more expensive institutional care setting.
“We are grateful for the inspiring work of Senators Capito and Warner, and will continue to work with them to ensure that a cure for Alzheimer’s is the Grand Challenge for this Congress and Administration,” said UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Co-Founder and Chairman George Vradenburg. “The rate of Alzheimer’s disease will triple in the coming decades, and our Congressional leaders must reflect America’s great need for a cancer-sized solution for this cancer-sized problem.”
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UsAgainstAlzheimer's is an innovative, patient-centered non-profit demanding – and delivering – a solution to Alzheimer’s. Driven by the suffering of millions of families, UsAgainstAlzheimer’s presses for greater urgency from government, industry and the scientific community in the quest for an Alzheimer's cure – accomplishing this through its own patient-centered effective leadership, collaborative advocacy and strategic investments.
Founded in 2010, UsAgainstAlzheimer’s has worked across sectors to: (1) secure the national goal of preventing and effectively treating Alzheimer’s by 2025; (2) help secure nearly $1 billion in additional public funding for Alzheimer’s research over the past few years; (3) drive global efforts that resulted in the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations, the G7 group, to embrace a similar 2025 goal and to call for greater levels of research investment and collaboration; (4) transform the system of Alzheimer’s clinical trials for greater speed, efficiency and quality; and (5) forge a global process of industry, regulators and payers to bring greater clarity to the approval and payment of innovative medicines for Alzheimer’s.