A Letter to Doctors: Talk with Your Patients about Brain Health and Alzheimer’s Disease

Editor’s note: This blog post is an open letter to the medical community from UsAgainstAlzheimer’s board member Greg O’Brien, who suffers from and lives daily with Alzheimer’s, about how doctors can improve the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and other dementias; care in the early stages of the disease; and the critical importance of a candid dialogue about brain health. Dear Primary Care and Family Doctors, As T.S. Eliot has said: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.” Alzheimer’s has been

Stephanie Monroe's Congressional Testimony on the Importance of Paid Leave

Stephanie Monroe, Executive Director of AfricanAmericansAgainst Alzheimer's, a network of UsAgainstAlzheimer's, testified before the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, "Caring for America: Legislation to Support Patients, Caregivers, and Providers." Ms. Monroe spoke about her experience as a family caregiver to her father who lives with Alzheimer's and emphasized the vital importance of health equity in driving early detection and investing in caregivers through paid family and medical leave. Watch the full testimony below.

Mandy Moore Raises Awareness of Alzheimer’s On and Off Screen

She plays a character with dementia on the TV show This Is Us. In real life, the actor is joining the fight against Alzheimer's disease. * This article was originally published in Brain&Life Magazine. After filming her last scene for the 2019 Thanksgiving episode of This Is Us, a decades-spanning NBC drama, Mandy Moore rushed back to her trailer, shut the door, and burst into tears. “I had all this emotion pent up that I was holding back, and I had to let it go,” she recalls. In that episode, her character, Rebecca, finally admits to her son Randall that

Who Pulled the Plug on Hope for an Alzheimer’s Treatment?

Hope springs eternal… But does it really today in this age of personal and professional second-guessing and gotcha? If we wait for perfection, is there hope? Wrote Alexander Pope, in the 1700s, considered among the foremost English poets in the 18th century: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest. The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.” — An Essay On Man Pope, sadly, may not have been a poet before his time, but of his time. Time understandably changes perspectives—from the pure hope of

New Perspectives: A 14-Year-Old’s Advocacy on Alzheimer’s

My name is Sohta Cheung-Naito, and I am a rising ninth-grader living in Westchester, New York who is committed to advocating for families touched by Alzheimer’s disease.

My Story: What Congress Can Do to Support Brain Health Equity for Patients & Caregivers

My mother’s journey with Alzheimer’s disease over the past six years exemplifies the challenges facing people living with the disease, their caregivers and communities of color.

UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Data Brief Drawing New Attention to Brain Health Equity for Communities of Color

A new data brief from the UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Center for Brain Health Equity highlighted the 41 congressional districts associated with the top 25 counties that have the highest prevalence of Alzheimer’s among Black and Latino Americans in the Medicare program has drawn new attention to the social determinants of health present in the districts and counties most impacted by Alzheimer’s among people of color. During a virtual briefing to launch the data brief, leaders in Congress and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cited the need to promote early detection and diagnosis, support people living with the disease