The Alzheimer’s Association and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention kicked off “The Healthy Brain Initiative: The Public Health Road Map for State and National Partnerships, 2013-2018” today at the 2013 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Boston.
This program is a follow up to their 2007 “Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Health Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health.” According to a press release from the association, the goal is to “create a tool for public health officials to improve the quality of life for those families and advance cognitive health as a integral component of public health.”
A morning workshop about the program included panelists from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Emory University, The Alzheimer’s Association, New York Department of Health and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. Participants focused on action steps the public health community can take at all levels, across disciplines, to address cognitive health and impairment, including implementing the Road Map and making cognitive health a priority.
News from the conference this past weekend included results of a Georgetown University study on possible associations between pre-diabetes and Alzheimer’s, an inverse relationship between Alzheimer’s onset and cancer, new therapies that target physical changes in the brain and possible association between the diabetes drug metformin and decreased risk of dementia.
Note: Research presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Some resources:
- Georgetown University School of Medicine media relations: Karen Mallet, km463@georgetown.edu
- Kaiser Permanente Division of Research media relations: 510-891-3400; DOR-Communications@kp.org
- Johns Hopkins School of Medicine media relations: 410-955-6681, Staff emails
- Alzheimer’s Association’s media line: 312.335.4078,media@alz.org
- Video clips from the panel “New Therapeutic Targets and Approaches in Alzheimer’s Disease”
