Kate Dyer-Seeley  

Kate with Senator Wyden at the Senate’s hearing on Alzheimer’s disease.  Senator Wyden has been an advocate of increasing funding for research.     

I was most excited about attending some of the research sessions at the Public Policy Forum.  It was disappointing to learn that federal funding for Alzheimer’s research has flat-lined over the past few years.  In fact funding for Alzheimer’s through the NIH (National Institute of Health) was at $658 million in 2003.   Today it’s at $644 million.  When factoring in things like inflation, that represents a 15% cut.  This translates into only 20% of NIH’s research projects securing funding.  It also means that young scientists are not pursuing careers in the field of research.

Onward with the staggering  numbers.  There are currently 5.2 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease.  An additional 10 million Baby Boomers will develop the disease in the coming years.  The disease will destroy our health care system and bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid if left unchecked.

The Alzheimer’s Association is calling for Congress to increase NIH funding by $125 million.  That number sounds impressive right?  Well not so much.  

NIH funding for diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and AIDS are in the 4 billion and up range.  Alzheimer’s disease isn’t even on the map. 

When we’ve invested in research, gains are made.  Heart disease, the leading cause of death, for example has decreased by 8.6%, while deaths attributed to Alzheimer’s disease are up 44.7%. 

An increase of $125 million will be one step toward the association’s goal of 1 billion in research funding.  It will be broken down as follows:

• $50 million for clinical trials to find preventions.
• $30 million to find early markers of the disease.
• $45 million for basic science research.

Here’s my second call to action: contact your Congressional representatives and ask them to increase fiscal year 2009 Alzheimer’s research at the NIH by $125 million.  Find your congressional reps here.  I’d like to start tracking our advocacy efforts, so after you’ve written your reps do me a favor and comment on this page (click the brown square next to the title of this post to comment).

          

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 7:21 am and is filed under Alzheimer's Info, Public Policy Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.