WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services released the first full-length Draft National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease. The plan includes the bold national goal of preventing or treating Alzheimer’s disease by 2025. This goal marks an historic commitment by the federal government to tackling this devastating disease. As the founder of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer's Disease and House author of the National Alzheimer’s Project Act, which required the creation of a national plan on Alzheimer’s disease, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass) released the following statement following the release of the plan.

“It is Oscar season, and this draft national plan is our award-winning script. Now that we have a draft script, we must finance the film. The deadline of preventing or treating Alzheimer’s by 2025 will help set milestones too keep us on track, and Congress must allocate the funds to make the strategies outlined in this plan a reality. I look forward to finalizing this plan and working with my Congressional colleagues to help pass legislation to ensure that one day our children will have to look to the history books to ever know there was a disease called Alzheimer’s.”

Earlier this month, Rep. Markey introduced H.R. 3891, the bipartisan Spending Reductions Through Innovations in Therapies (SPRINT) Act, which would spur innovation in research and drug development for high-cost, chronic health conditions such as Alzheimer’s.
 
In April 2011, Rep. Markey authored the Health Outcomes, Planning and Education (H.O.P.E.) Act to encourage early Alzheimer’s diagnoses and connect caregivers to information and resources. In May 2011, Rep. Markey and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-Chair of the Congressional Taskforce on Alzheimer’s disease, introduced the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Act, which would require the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a strategic plan to expedite therapeutic outcomes for those with or at risk of Alzheimer’s disease and coordinate Alzheimer’s research within the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health and across all Centers and Institutes of the NIH.

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