Health & Healthcare

Together, Let’s Defeat Alzheimer’s Disease

Dec 17, 2018 11:00 AM ET
Campaign: Connecting Business to Cause

Every 65 seconds, Alzheimer’s disease begins to destroy the brain of a loved one somewhere in America. That’s over 1,300 people per day. Right now, there’s no way to stop it from touching you or your loved ones.

At this moment, an estimated 5.7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, a number equal to the entire population of Denmark. Another 16 million, about a third of which are age 65 and older, are providing care to them.

And because we are living longer, about 1 in 3 people over age 85 will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. If no treatment or cure is found, the number of people with the disease could explode to close to 15 million by 2050. The odds are if you not living with this disease you are—or will become—a caretaker for someone who does.

Alzheimer’s is the most expensive disease in the country, costing $277 billion in 2018, or the country of Chile’s estimated total GDP in 2017. Early and accurate diagnosis could save up to $7.9 trillion in medical and care costs.

People with Alzheimer’s experience memory loss, confusion, an inability to communicate or care for oneself, and a vulnerability to pneumonia and other illnesses. Because of these health complications, they have twice as many hospital stays per year as other older people.

You can help bring scientists closer to preventing, treating, and curing Alzheimer’s through a gift to Alzheimer’s Disease Research, a program of BrightFocus Foundation.

If you’re a military or federal employee, you can join the 2018 Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). The CFC number for Alzheimer’s Disease Research is 30518.

BrightFocus Foundation is on a mission to defeat age-related diseases, like Alzheimer’s, by funding innovative research worldwide and increasing public awareness.

Every hour, BrightFocus Foundation invests $5,000 in research. And for over 33 years, BrightFocus’ Alzheimer’s Disease Research program has awarded nearly $120 million to potentially memory-saving science. That’s thanks to generous people like you that fund researchers giving hope to those like Jill from California.

“My father passed from Alzheimer’s and my father-in-law from dementia, so the future for our kids is not looking especially bright. Except for dedicated researchers . . . that give us hope.”—Jill from California

Help make the future for your kids and others Alzheimer’s-free. If you’re a private sector employee, you can also help fund Alzheimer’s Disease Research through your employer’s workplace giving program.

Click here if your company would like to start a workplace giving program to support Alzheimer’s Disease Research. We have partnered with America's Charities, a workplace giving federation, which can help optimize employees’ charitable impact.

Here are just a few examples of what you and your employers can achieve with gifts of all sizes:

  • $20/week: $1,000 ($19.23 per week through payroll giving) supports the sequencing of a person’s entire DNA for research purposes.
  • $20-$40/week: $1,000 to $2,000 ($19.23 - $38.46 per week through payroll giving) helps send a promising young researcher to an international science conference to share research results—a critical venue for analysis of discoveries.
  • $100 - $200/week: $5,000 to $10,000 ($96.15 - $192.31 per week through payroll giving) helps pay for the costs of supplies for experiment, where researchers can identify levels and activities of proteins linked with the disease. Or it can fund BrightFocus Foundation’s Resource Center, which develops and distributes free publications and resources, and serves as a liaison between people living with Alzheimer’s disease, medical professionals, health organizations, and government agencies.
  • $200-$400/week: $10,000 to $20,000 ($192.31 - $384.62 per week through payroll giving) helps pay for the costs of supplies for a mass spectrometry protein identification experiment, which identifies proteins that can be used by researchers in their work.
  • $1,000/week: $50,000 ($961.54 per week through payroll giving) helps support one year of a postdoctoral fellow’s research. A single employer and its employees can raise this amount through the collective power of workplace giving and matching gifts.

To learn more about the work you are advancing with Alzheimer’s Disease Research, visit www.brightfocus.org/alzheimers.