USA2 SPOTLIGHT  

A July 27, 2016 LillyPad.com blog post by Phyllis Ferrell, Eli Lilly’s Vice President for Global Alzheimer’s Disease Platform Team, highlighted Alzheimer’s impact on women and highlighted her work with WomenAgainstAlzheimer’s. According to Ferrell, “To fight this disparity, I joined some of the smartest, most amazing women I know as a founding member of WomenAgainstAlzheimers. We are an open coalition of women from science, industry, academia, public policy, advocacy and the lay community who decided that we can be more effective by working together in the fight to end Alzheimer’s. As my friend Meryl Comer says, “We have changed enough diapers and we don’t want our kids changing ours.” If this is important to you I encourage you to get involved and find out more about joining our #WeWontWait.”

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An August 2, 2016 Forbes.com opinion piece by Kenneth Davis, CEO of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, called on Congress to incentivize Alzheimer’s research and development. According to Davis, “The fact that there have been few successes since, speaks volumes to the importance of accelerating Alzheimer’s research. We desperately need new drugs, and the search should become a national priority. So, Congress must set aside its partisan bickering, and incentivize pharmaceutical companies to aggressively invest in research on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias that has the potential to save millions of lives while saving tens of billions of dollars in health care spending.”

An August 1, 2016 PBS Newshour article highlighted the myriad challenges with long-term care for state and federal governments. According to the article, “Experts estimate that about half of all people turning 65 today will need daily help as they age, either at home or in nursing homes. Such long-term care will cost an average of about $91,000 for men and double that for women, because they live longer…Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, was never intended to cover long-term care for everyone. Now it pays for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s long-term care expenses, and the share is growing. As Baby Boomers age, federal Medicaid spending on long-term care is widely expected to rise significantly — by nearly 50 percent by 2026. The pressure will only intensify as people age, so both state and federal officials are scrambling to control spending.”

An August 1, 2016 University of Wisconsin-Madison news statement announced that university “researchers have identified a scientific approach that may help predict which older adults are more likely to develop cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease well before the onset of dementia.” According to the article, “This approach – which statistically analyzes a panel of biomarkers – could help identify people most likely to benefit from drugs or other interventions to slow the progress of the disease. The study was published in the August edition of the journal Brain.”