Local advocates and public officials are striving to educate people on the rising costs and growing crisis the Alzheimer’s disease is creating.
“Alzheimer’s is a tremendously expensive disease,” said Dr. Samuel Brinkman, an Abilene expert on cognitive illnesses, Friday.
“You have something that affects five-and-a-quarter million people and is a terminal illness,” Brinkman said. “It’s a long, slow and resource-depleting illness.”
According to the national Alzheimer’s Association, in 2013, the illness will cost the nation an estimated $203 billion, a number expected to rise to $1.2 trillion by 2050.
Even without considering the illness’ “painful beyond words” human toll, figures like that are why a recent Road Map-style initiative by the Alzheimer’s Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is vital, Brinkman said.
There has to be some kind of an organized, governmental response to that simply to keep the costs that are going to be paid down,” he said.
The recent initiative, the brainchild of the Alzheimer’s Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, encourages public health officials to work to stem the disease’s growing crisis.
Libby Connally, who heads Abilene’s Alzheimer’s Association branch, said that the public health system deals directly with those afflicted by the disease, and their families.
“There are things we can do to help these folks have a better quality of life while on this journey,” she said. “This is educating people about that.”
The goal of the national initiative, according to a statement by Lynda Anderson, director of the CDC’s Healthy Aging Program, is to “enhance understanding of the public health burden of cognitive impairment, help build evidence-based communications and programs, and translate that foundation into effective public health practices in states and communities.”
Among those goals are integrating cognitive health and impairment into state and local government plans, developing strategies to help ensure that state public health departments have expertise in cognitive health and impairment, and supporting continuing education efforts that improve health care providers’ ability to recognize early signs of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Chris Van Deusen, assistant press officer with the Texas Department of State Health Services, said Alzheimer’s “burden on patients, caregivers, the health care system, and Medicare and Medicaid,” with “no (current) cure or long-term treatment,” make it a definite public health concern for the state.
Texas boasts a “very active” Texas Council on Alzheimer’s disease and Related Disorders, Van Deusen said, responsible for the recent development of a “best clinical practices” policy specific to Texas for early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of the illness, with and without drugs.
“We also include a module on Alzheimer’s in our Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a survey that tracks health risks and conditions,” he said, with a goal of creating a “better picture of Alzheimer’s and similar conditions,” he said.
The state also funds the Texas Alzheimer’s Research and Care Consortium, he said.
Texas’ current State Plan on Alzheimer’s disease includes a “brain health” component, with a heavy focus on lifestyle choices, said Brinkman, who served on one of the plan’s workgroups,
County Judge Downing Bolls said that the county works “very closely” with local mental health authorities, but does not allocate resources directly toward the local Alzheimer’s Association, for example.
Speaking “as a private individual,” Bolls worried Friday that the wording of the initiative’s proposed goals imply “spending money, shifting resources, and passing the costs down to local communities — and often, local government.”
“Unfortunately, the growing trend these days is to nationalize it, make resolving it a mandate, and pass it down to the local level to be addressed,” he said.
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