National Alzheimer’s Project Act: Nixon and Voices of Leading Scientists Determine Change is Needed
New York – Signed into law in 2011, the National Alzheimer’s Project Act resulted in the 2012 National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, the goal of which is prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease by 2025. The Plan outlines initiatives to help doctors, caregivers, and individuals with Alzheimer’s and other dementias as well as raise disease awareness and advance research. In June 2014, the Alzheimer’s Association gathered an expert workgroup consisting of world-renowned Alzheimer’s experts, among them Dr. Ralph A. Nixon, Director of the Center for Dementia Research at the Nathan Kline Institute. The group evaluated the Plan and its progress and determined that changes were needed to meet the set milestones. Most urgent were recommendations impacting drug development, risk reduction and new conceptual models of Alzheimer’s. These recommendations in the newly published article, titled “Scientists say national Alzheimer’s plan milestones must be strengthened to meet goal by 2025,” make it clear that research efforts for Alzheimer’s disease must be enlarged in scale, expanded in scope, and better coordinated.