Setting a goal is the first step to
success. If you don’t know where you are headed, you don’t really know when you
get there.
In the year 2001, our local Alzheimer’s Chapter Executive Director Penny Braun asked
if I’d like to go to Washington, D.C., to the Alzheimer’s Forum. “We’re asking
for research funding,” she told me. “The goal is one billion dollars.”
“Well, we need to find a cure, and I
don’t mind asking for a billion dollars,” I said with full confidence. It
wasn’t long before I discovered that research funding was way short of a billion
dollars. Alzheimer’s was pushed firmly to the back burner and funding was so
tiny it barely made a blip on the NIH budget.
So year after year, I packed my
bags and went to D.C. with that illusive billion-dollar goal in mind. I can
remember being challenged with, “And just where would we get that money?” and
“We can’t ‘earmark’ NIH funds.” We inched a little higher, except for some of
the tight budget years when we lost ground.
Things began to look up when the
National Alzheimer’s Project Act was approved in 2010. This act required the
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to annually update the
National Alzheimer’s Plan. The plan laid out a goal to prevent or find an effective
treatment by 2025.
The Alzheimer’s Accountability Act
of 2015 required scientists at NIH to submit an annual Alzheimer’s research
budget to Congress. This is known as a “bypass budget,” and it lets Congress hear what
scientist think should be in the budget for Alzheimer’s research to meet our
goals. They determined that if NIH invested $2 billion in research, we could
meet the goal.
It wasn’t easy to jump research funding
from the mid-millions to $2 billion. It wasn’t an easy sell, and it seems there
was always a medical crisis that got the billions to stop them while the five
million people with Alzheimer’s waited for a cure.
Alzheimer’s advocates are
determined people! Alzheimer’s disease costs our country $259 billion annually,
but research dollars have traditionally been tight. In 2015 (FY 16), we
received a historic $350 million increase. Once this increase was appropriated, the
annual research budget was closing in on the billion-dollar mark at $991
million.
In 2016 (FY17), the Senate Appropriations
Committee requested a $400 million increase which would bring our total to $1.4
billion. We celebrated with the appropriations chair Senator Roy Blunt at the
2016 Alzheimer’s Forum.
Then, this year, we received the
bad news that NIH’s overall FY17 budget would be cut, and our historic increase
was in jeopardy. We knew we were fighting an uphill battle to reach our goal.
We weren’t sure if we had been successful, but our champions vowed to fight for
us.
Once the budget was approved, my
inbox was filled with “hip-hip hoorays” as Alzheimer’s advocates cheered the
success of reaching our research goal.
In his letter to advocates,
Alzheimer’s Association CEO Harry Johns said, “This has been a historic week for the Alzheimer’s
Association, the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement (AIM) and our cause. As you know,
on Monday, congressional leaders from both parties and both houses of Congress
announced that the 2017 federal government funding bill includes the largest
increase in history for Alzheimer’s research, $400 million. Today, the
president signed that increase into law, bringing Alzheimer’s research funding
at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to nearly $1.4 billion.”
First goal reached (around at least
since 2001): research funding of $1 billion. Next goal: finding a cure by 2025,
or sooner! The sooner, the better. Keep an eye on the goal.
Copyright © May 2017 by L.S. Fisher
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