VIDEO: Proposed Alzheimer’s funding boost could mean wider research scope

TORONTO – In 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the National Alzheimer’s Project Act, with the lofty goal of preventing or effectively treating Alzheimer’s disease by 2025. A year later, a panel of leading researchers translated that goal into harsh reality: Reaching it would cost at least $2 billion each year. That level of funding would put Alzheimer’s research on the same footing as research on cancer, heart disease, and HIV – areas that have experienced rapid and sustained clinical progress.

But securing federal funding support has been a slow go. At the end of 2016, even with historic funding increases, the total allocation still fell short of $1 billion. That’s about to change for the better. The proposed 2017 budget, if approved, will boost the allocation to $1.4 billion.

What will that new money mean to researchers who’ve struggled for years to get grants? And what could it mean to doctors, patients, and families who still face a devastating disease with no cure, no prevention, and no effective treatments? Robert J. Egge, chief public policy officer for the Alzheimer’s Association, breaks it down in this video interview at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2016.

msullivan@frontlinemedcom.com

On Twitter @alz_gal