Washington, DC – USAgainstAlzheimer’s, an entrepreneurial and disruptive advocacy organization demanding greater urgency in the fight against Alzheimer's, urges the 114th Congress to prioritize funding for Alzheimer’s disease research and related programs as it sets out its agenda for the year.
“It is disappointing that the President failed to mention Alzheimer’s disease in the State of the Union address despite the fact that his Administration put in place a National Plan that established as its first goal the prevention and effectively treatment of Alzheimer’s by 2025,” said George Vradenburg, Co-founder and Chairman of USAgainstAlzheimer’s. “Are we serious about the 2025 goal or are we not?”
“Now is the time to build upon the growing global momentum behind the 2025 goal and provide the $2 billion annual investment recommended by experts needed to achieve that national and international goal. From polio to cancer and from heart disease to HIV/AIDS, we have seen that a commitment to research and investment and targeted innovation on high-cost diseases is a proven deficit reduction strategy. As the most expensive disease in America robs us financially and personally and claims more than a half-million people every year, the 5,000,000 people with dementia and the tens of millions at risk simply cannot afford to wait.”
Specifically, USAgainstAlzheimer’s calls on Congress to:
- Double funding for Alzheimer’s disease research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the FY16 budget. Congress must quickly ramp up funding Alzheimer’s research investment to $2 billion a year from the current level of about $585 million.
- Strengthen and enhance our clinical trials system to reduce the time, cost and risk of getting new medicines to people who need them.
- Strengthen the National Alzheimer’s Project Act to require greater levels of accountability, oversight and transparency to ensure we are tracking the progress toward our 2025 national goal and providing effective care and services for those with the disease.
- Assure that the United States is leading the growing global momentum to address Alzheimer’s and dementia by building global sources of finance, infrastructure, innovation-friendly reimbursement, and tools for early detection and diagnosis.
“The nation has set a goal of preventing and treating Alzheimer’s by 2025 – that’s just ten years away,” Vradenburg said. “We are falling dangerously behind that timeline because of the current business-as-usual approach. We urge Congress to commit to the resources and policies necessary to achieve the 2025 goal, especially by providing necessary research funding to the NIH for Alzheimer’s initiatives.”
“Alzheimer's knows no party affiliation. The Alzheimer's national plan was adopted in response to a unanimous command from Congress in 2010. Ending Alzheimer’s is a commitment that Republicans and Democrats made together, and on which the new Republican Congress and the President can work together,” Vradenburg continued. “It’s high time we work together with the energy, focus and passion to finance the means needed to get us to that goal.”
Background
National Institutes of Health (NIH) investments have fallen over the last several years on an inflation-adjusted basis. Failure to ‘catch up’ and move dramatically beyond funding levels of ten years ago risks loss of U.S. leadership in biomedical research and in innovation in this most important sector of the global economy. Experts believe that the United States must ramp up funding and increase Alzheimer’s research investment to $2 billion a year if we are going to find a cure for the disease.
The 2015 government spending package, known as the ‘cromnibus,’ included an increase of $25 million for the National Institute on Aging (NIA), with an expectation that much of the funding would support additional research into Alzheimer’s and dementia. The increase follows a similar $100 million bump included for Fiscal Year 2014 and underscores the bipartisan support in Congress to address the mounting health and fiscal challenges of Alzheimer’s and dementia during a challenging fiscal climate.
Recent research indicates that Alzheimer’s disease claims more than 500,000 lives in America annually, as more than five million victims are slowly dying of the disease. The number of individuals with Alzheimer's is expected to almost triple, approaching 16 million, in the next few decades, and research shows that the direct care costs of Alzheimer’s exceeds those of cancer and heart disease. Total costs of Alzheimer’s exceed $200 billion annually, and 70 percent of this cost is shouldered by Medicare and Medicaid. If substantial progress is not made in stopping Alzheimer’s, Medicare and Medicaid spending will reach $1.1 trillion in today’s dollars by 2050.
Founded in 2010, USAgainstAlzheimer’s has worked across sectors to: (1) Secure the national goal of preventing and effectively treating Alzheimer’s by 2025 and helping secure more than $360 million in additional public funding for Alzheimer’s research over the past few years; (2) 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 call for greater levels of investment and collaboration; and (3) Forge collaborations to improve efficiencies for an expedited drug discovery, approval and reimbursement processes.
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USAgainstAlzheimer’s is an entrepreneurial and disruptive organization demanding a solution to Alzheimer's by 2020. Driven by the suffering of millions of families, USAgainstAlzheimer’s presses for greater urgency across government, industry and the scientific community in the quest for an Alzheimer's cure – accomplishing this through effective leadership, collaborative advocacy, and strategic investments.