How Blue Button Can Help Caregivers and Beat Alzheimer's

Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared on The Huffington Post It's one of this century's most glaring paradoxes. You can do almost anything on your smart phone -- buy a book, find a taxi, manage your investment portfolio, watch a Yankees game while in Mogadishu -- but you can't get to your health records. The Internet, great disruptive force that it is, can't penetrate the wall between you and your own health information siloed away in your doctors' files. Remember the days, decades ago, when email systems in different companies couldn't speak to each other? It seems like ancient

Alzheimer’s Is the New HIV

Editor's note: this piece orginally appeared on David's personal blog It is not every day that I walk out of a medical school lecture truly inspired. The topic was on HIV and how far we have come in the treatment and management of the disease. We’ve all heard how “HIV is no longer a death sentence,” but actually going through the details on how much success we’ve had in treating HIV is amazing. I remember learning about HIV in school when I was in 5th grade. I recall seeing pictures of the progression of someone who had HIV and didn’t

G8: Leading a Global Response to Alzheimer's

Editor's Note: This blog post originally appeared on Huffington Post Breaking news: Political leader delivers on promise. To wit: The British government has just announced that it will host a G8 Summit in December dedicated to Alzheimer's and Dementia. The announcement of the London event delivers on Prime Minister David Cameron's pledge to use the UK's Presidency of the G8 to launch a global initiative to address Alzheimer's disease. Mr. Cameron's leadership is a notable victory not only for those who suffer from Alzheimer's, but for families, communities and society at large. The prevalence of Alzheimer's is exploding around the

5 Things to Never Say to a Person With Alzheimer's

Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared on Huffington Post Yesterday afternoon, I walked into the spacious room belonging to Mary, a woman with dementia who has few visitors and with whom I've volunteered to spend a little time every week. I greeted her, complimented her on her beautiful turquoise sweater, and shook her hand. Then I sat down at her little table that was overflowing with books, photographs, the newspaper and other items she wants to keep close at hand. I started off by picking up a small framed photo of Mary with her husband and three children --

The Invisible Victims of Alzheimer’s Disease: Family Caregivers

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared in the July 2013 edition of the LEAD Coalition newsletter, which you can read online here To a few close family and friends who know me as a longtime caregiver and advocate for my aging parents and (more recently) my in-laws, I have done the impossible: survived 17 years of struggling to support the needs of three-out-of-four parents who have either died from, or currently struggle with, some form of dementia. To the rest of the world, I am invisible. At 46 years old, I am a small business owner, I have a college