The Clinton campaign has rolled out a new plan to fight Alzheimer’s disease, more than doubling research funding to $2 billion a year and vowing to find a cure by 2025. She lays out the public health arguments for ramping up investment, pointing out that it’s already the sixth leading cause of death in a rapidly aging country.
But her plan is also geared toward women voters, as the announcement makes explicit: “Women are at the epicenter of the epidemic: two-thirds of the people over age 65 who have Alzheimer’s are women, are a majority of Alzheimer’s and dementia caregivers.” In addition to funding more research, Clinton proposes more incremental changes to improve coordination of care and to make sure Alzheimer’s patients are properly diagnosed.
These aren’t big, flashy ideas, but they’re the kind of concrete changes that Hillary hopes will appeal to ordinary families who’ve had their lives upended by these kinds of chronic diseases. The latest proposal builds on a plan that Clinton unveiled last month, which gives new tax credits and strengthens Social Security benefits for family members caring for sick or elderly relatives—a majority of which are women.