Today, nearly 7 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s, including 720,000 in California. That’s roughly 36,000 in Santa Clara County and potentially 1,440 in Gilroy.
Without medical breakthroughs, this number is projected to nearly double in the next 15 years. These numbers can be overwhelming, and so can individual experiences.
In my case, both my maternal grandmother and her daughter (my aunt) suffered with Alzheimer’s for several years, so I unfortunately saw the effects of this disease and its impact on my family firsthand.
In the fight to end Alzheimer’s and all other dementia, now is the time to do more, not less. We need our congressional representatives and senators to fight to protect research into Alzheimer’s and dementia at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the BOLD Act program at the CDC, and dementia care and support services like Medicaid.
We’re in a hopeful new era for Alzheimer’s, largely thanks to Congress working across party lines. Bipartisan action has led to the first FDA-approved treatments, the first FDA-approved blood test for diagnosis; and Medicaid coverage of the in-home and residential care that virtually everyone with this fatal disease will eventually need until there’s a cure.
We are so close, we must not stop now. Instead of cutting funding for the NIH by 40% as the president has proposed, I urge Congresswoman Lofgren and Senators Schiff and Padilla to fight to increase funding for Alzheimer’s and dementia research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $113 million and provide $35 million to implement the BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Fiscal Year (FY) 2026.
By doing so, Congresswoman Lofgren and Senators Schiff and Padilla have the opportunity to provide millions of Americans like me with a sense of hope. It is through increased research funding that we will discover new ways to treat and eventually prevent this devastating disease. I look forward to that day both for our state and for our local community here in Gilroy.
Geoff Heredia
Gilroy Resident
