By Mark Reynolds
Last Saturday, the Alzheimer’s Association held their annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s on the Highland side of the Walkway Over the Hudson. They had more than 600 participants in 114 teams and at the time of the step-off the ALZ Association had raised $221,119 their stated goal of $245,000.
David Sobel, Executive Director of the Hudson Valley Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, said they have been doing this Walk in various iterations since 1980.
“This is my eighth year doing this and it is going to be our biggest and best ever,” he predicted. “Last year we ended up with about $210,000 and that was the most we’ve ever raised, so doing the math, that means we have already raised the most that this walk has ever raised.” He said fundraising for this fiscal year continues through December 31.
Sobel said half of the money they raise stays in the Hudson Valley and the other half goes to the home office for global research.
“We have to go down two paths; the first is for what we do here in the Hudson Valley to take care of people living with Alzheimer’s, their caregivers, their family members and we also have to try to find a cause and a cure for this disease, so that we can live in a world without Alzheimer’s and all of the dementia; we’re doing both at the same time.” He noted that ALZ eventually overwhelms the brain and shuts it down, resulting in death.
Sobel said there are currently 7 million people living with Alzheimer’s in the United States.
“That number has absolutely been on the rise, but as they have more ways to diagnose and as the boomer generation is now older, you’re getting to a point right now where this is an epidemic and I think everybody recognizes that,” he said.
Sobel said there is good news because in 2021 they started with treatments using Anacamucab that slowed the progression of the disease. He acknowledged that Anacamucab, “was controversial, was not a cure, was not for everyone, was very expensive, had minimal effect, but it opened the door to the other treatments that have come out like Lecanemab and Donanemab.” He said these drugs are able to provide patients with maybe 6 to 10 months more of cognition before Alzheimer’s sets in.
“We want to be able to give people the opportunity to have access to these treatments; that’s what we’re fighting for,” he said. He noted that when theses drugs first came out the cost was about $55,000 per year but it has dropped to about $25,000 which he contends is still un-affordable to a majority of Americans.
Just before the walk began each of the registered participants received a colored Promise Garden Flower that represents their connection to the disease: Blue denotes someone living with Alzheimer’s or other dementia; Purple for those who have lost a someone to the disease; Yellow is for those who are currently supporting or caring for a person living with Alzheimer’s and Orange for those who support the cause and the Association’s vision of a world without Alzheimer’s and all other dementia.
Walk Manager Tina Eckert works with a committee to seek sponsors, secure items used to run the event, recruits the Teams who participate and volunteers to assist on Day of the Walk. She laughed about the time frame, saying, “we start tomorrow for 2025 [but] it’s interesting, it’s fun and I get to work with the most amazing people and we’re like a family.”
Eckert said the ALZ Association works with Medicare and Medicaid to help lower the cost of medications, “but we have an advocacy arm, called the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement [AIM], where we work with local, state and federal officials to try to make these things happen because the cost is ridiculously expensive.”
Tara Arthurs and Anya Powers are volunteers with AIM, “where we do advocacy work in Albany and in Washington D.C., pushing for coverage of medications by Medicare and the Alzheimer’s agenda.”
The bipartisan Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act (P.L.115-406) is aimed at creating an Alzheimer’s public health infrastructure across the country to implement effective Alzheimer’s interventions focused on public health issues, such as increasing early detection and diagnosis, reducing risk, and preventing avoidable hospitalizations.
Sobel urged people to “dig a little deeper” and donate what they can so the Alzheimer’s Association can reach this year’s financial goal. To donate go to www.dutchessulsterwalk.org or for more information, they can be reached on their 24/7 helpline 800-272-3900.