COVID-19 and Dementia: Imagining the Future with a Vaccine

With the national conversation focused on when a vaccine for COVID-19 might be approved and available, our recent UsAgainstAlzheimer’s A-LIST® survey asked the Alzheimer’s community about how their lives might change with an available vaccine. The September survey showed that 60 percent of survey respondents intend to get a COVID-19 vaccine when it is available. That’s nearly double the percentage of respondents in a recent national survey, but it still reflected concern that the vaccine development and testing was being rushed for political reasons. No community is being harder hit by a non-infectious disease in the middle of the COVID-19

Q&A with UsA2 Brain Health Equity Intern Sofia Arraut

During Hispanic Heritage Month, we have been featuring researchers, civil rights leaders, and people living with Alzheimer’s and related dementias on UsAgainstAlzheimers’ (UsA2) Twitter and Facebook accounts. Today we want to feature one of the youngest members on our team working to address Alzheimer’s in Latino communities. Sofia Natalia Arraut is a paid intern with our Brain Health Equity and Access program and attends Florida International University (FIU) where she is studying Nutritional Science with a Chemistry minor on a pre-medicine track. Too often, people think of Alzheimer’s as a disease that only affects older people, but its impacts are

A-LIST Pulse of the Community (Archive 2018-2020)

A-LIST Pulse of the Community: Volume 1, Spring 2018 A-LIST Pulse of the Community: Volume 2, Fall 2018 A-LIST Pulse of the Community: Volume 3, Spring 2019 A-LIST Pulse of the Community: Volume 4, Fall 2019 A-LIST Pulse of the Community: Volume 5, Spring 2020 A-LIST Pulse of the Community: Volume 6, April 2020

Alzheimer’s: Moving from a Wish and a Prayer to Hope and a Plan

In 2013, more than one hundred scientists from 36 countries called upon governments of highly industrialized nations to make prevention of dementia one of their major health aims. Nearly a decade later none of nations in the G8 at that time has done this, despite the increasing cadence of strong evidence that protective measures and risk reduction steps are effective in delaying onset of dementia and in some cases, preventing it. The Economist stated it unequivocally: dementia is a global emergency and governments should act now. Millions of families deserve better information and swift action. Setting a national goal to

The Power of Prayer: ‘It’s All About Breathing’

The Hot Chocolate Sparrow in Orleans on Outer Cape Cod is an inspiring place to think, write, and to talk. COVID-19 has chased all of us out of this eclectic cafe, so we now sit outside on picnic tables in the late summer sun on the lip of Cape Cod Bay. I’m sitting today over morning coffee with the Very Reverend Tracey Lind, former Dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland. We’ve become good friends. I’m here to listen. Tracey is wearing a bracelet with the anacronym: P.U.S.H. I ask her about it. Tracey, persistent in her faith, says, “Pray