Friday, March 13, 2009

Public Policy Forum

It's not too late to register for the Public Policy Forum hosted by the Alzheimer's Association at the end of this month in Washington DC. If you register before March 13th there is a discount. Go to http://www.alz.org/publicpolicyforum/09/overview.asp for more information.

At this year's conference the Alzheimer's Study Group (ASG) will be presenting their findings from an almost two year study of the state of Alzheimer's in the United States. The ASG was originated by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who heads the for profit organization Center for Health Transformation. The ASG is a bipartisan study and one of its members is Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Last year she and Speaker Gingrich spoke to a senate subcommittee during the Public Policy Forum on what they were trying to accomplish. This year, the results are in and the findings will be revealed at the Public Policy Forum. I have been fortunate to be involved with a group that gave input to the ASG and I'm anxious to see how some of these ideas and thoughts we had made its way into the study. Hopefully, we will learn a lot and hopefully, some of these ideas can be implemented to not only save the government some money in dealing with Alzheimer's but also to help the families struggling with this disease. If you can't make it to the forum, please watch the news toward the end of the month because it will certainly be making headlines.

Also, at this year's forum there will be an early stage summitt which will feature Still Alice author Lisa Genova who I have written about several times. I learned this week that a friend in Atlanta who has Alzheimer's and his wife will be joining Lisa during a panel discussion.

Alzhiemer's will be in the news --there's lots going on.

1 comment:

Diane said...

The thing that torques me about the PPF is that it is so insanely costly. Last year I was blessed to receive a scholarship, but when applying again this year, I noted it was a one time only scholarship. :( We're still waiting for SSDI here, 2+ years and unlike you, no private disability insurance to cover the gap. Meeting everyone was the best experience ever last year. I'm very sorry to be missing it this year.