{"id":3216,"date":"2010-10-17T12:55:28","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T18:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/?p=3216"},"modified":"2016-05-27T17:15:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T23:15:06","slug":"women-and-alzheimers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/17\/women-and-alzheimers\/","title":{"rendered":"Women and Alzheimer\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_0045.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3220\" title=\"IMG_0045\" src=\"http:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_0045.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_0045.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/IMG_0045-169x126.jpg 169w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>The spotlight on Alzheimer&#8217;s impact on women is being shown through a recently published report by Maria Shriver &#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shriverreport.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> The Shriver Report<\/a>. I encourage you to visit the website for the details and to  the report.<\/p>\n<p>This well done reports reveals that 66% of Alzheimer&#8217;s s and over 60% of Alzheimer&#8217;s caregivers are women.\u00a0 Taken from the website,   ask<\/a>  these numbers are astounding:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>10 million women either have Alzheimer\u2019s or are caring for someone with it.<\/li>\n<li>Women constitute about two-thirds of those  who suffer from Alzheimer\u2019s and also about 60 percent of the caregivers  for those who have it.<\/li>\n<li>A third of women caregivers are caring 24\/7  for a person with Alzheimer\u2019s. Nearly 40 percent say they had no choice  in becoming a caregiver.<\/li>\n<li>The societal impact of Alzheimer\u2019s disease\u2014on government, families and business\u2014totals about $300 billion per year.<\/li>\n<li>Almost two-thirds of all working caregivers  report having to go to work late, leave early or take time off to  provide care. Yet they get less support for elder care than they do for  child care. So it\u2019s not surprising that nearly half of all women  caregivers report high emotional and physical stress.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The site goes on to note:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Last year, The Shriver Report: A Woman\u2019s  Nation Changes Everything revealed a major tipping point: Working women  emerged as primary breadwinners for millions of households as their  presence grew to comprise fully half of all workers. This new report  makes it clear that women are in the midst of an even more far-reaching  transformation in which they work, raise kids, care for the elderly,  drive consumer decisions and may suffer emotional and physical stress  because of it all.<\/p>\n<p>The impact of Alzheimer\u2019s is stunning on a  broader scale as well. The economic cost, as the report shows, is now  about $300 billion a year and could triple in coming decades. As Maria  Shriver points out, with 78 million baby boomers now moving into their  later years, the cost of Alzheimer\u2019s to American society is expected to  be $20 trillion between now and 2050. And while annual per- costs  of Alzheimer\u2019s is $56,800, the lion\u2019s share of these costs, 60 percent,  is borne by families.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>ABC News is focusing on this report the week of October 18th on Good Morning America and the ABC Evening News. This is an interview Shriver did on ABC&#8217;s This Week Sunday, October 17th.<\/p>\n<p><object id=\"ABCESNWID\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"344\" height=\"278\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"quality\" value=\"high\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"allowNetworking\" value=\"all\" \/><param name=\"flashvars\" value=\"configUrl=http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/video\/sfp\/embedPlayerConfig&amp;configId=406732&amp;clipId=11901384&amp;showId=11901200&amp;gig_lt=1287335532631&amp;gig_pt=1287335536372&amp;gig_g=2\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/assets\/player\/walt2.6\/flash\/SFP_Walt.swf\" \/><param name=\"name\" value=\"ABCESNWID\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>The call to action based on this report is to make Alzheimer&#8217;s a national priority, fund research and raise awareness of the impact of women in Alzheimer&#8217;s. The report makes a compelling case:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Based on the most recently available data, annual  federal funding for cancer is about $6 billion, for cardiovascular  disease about $4 billion and for HIV\/AIDS about $3 billion. These are  all important investments that should continue based on their high  returns in lives saved.19 Not counting the one-time stimulus funds,  total federal funding for Alzheimer research is just $469 million.<\/p>\n<p>Alzheimer\u2019s must be a national priority. I\u2019m  encouraged by the White House Briefing on the Challenge of Alzheimer\u2019s  Disease in the United States in which I participated on World  Alzheimer\u2019s Day, Sept. 21, 2010. I believe it was a good step by this  administration toward what we need: a real and sustained effort to  change the course of Alzheimer\u2019s. But today, our federal government\u2014in  fact, our country as a whole\u2014is not prepared for the worsening Alzheimer  disaster.<\/p>\n<p>We aren\u2019t funding enough research to stop it.  We don\u2019t have a plan for handling the surging cost of care if it isn\u2019t  stopped. We don\u2019t have enough residential care facilities for that  inevitable point in the disease process when even the most dedicated  caregivers can no longer handle the care at home. Do the math: Without  even considering the human effects, Alzheimer\u2019s disease will cost our  nation $1 trillion a year when a baby born in 2010 turns 40.20 And,  we\u2019re spending less than $500 million a year to avoid those costs.  Should we invest more now to stop it, or wait and let that little baby  pay the costs 40 years later? The answer is clear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can make a difference today through making a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.curealzfund.org\/donate\" target=\"_blank\">donation<\/a> to support  research where 100% of your donation goes to funding Alzheimer&#8217;s  research at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.curealzfund.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Cure Alzheimer&#8217;s Fund<\/a>. Or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kintera.org\/siteapps\/advocacy\/ActionItem.aspx?c=mmKXLbP8E&amp;b=6239707\" target=\"_blank\">sign the petition<\/a> sponsored by  the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alz.org\/index.asp\" target=\"_blank\">Alzheimer&#8217;s Association<\/a> for Congress to fund the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alzheimersreadingroom.com\/2010\/03\/national-alzheimers-project-act-s3036.html\" target=\"_blank\">National Alzheimer&#8217;s Project Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you,<br \/>\nAlan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The spotlight on Alzheimer&#8217;s impact on women is being shown through a recently published report by Maria Shriver &#8211; The Shriver Report. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[431],"class_list":["post-3216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alzheimers","tag-alzheimers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alanarnette.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}