Appropriations Committee Passes Funding Bill with Nearly $1.4 Billion for Alzheimer’s Research
Washington, D.C.—U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the Co-Chair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease and a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced today that the Committee approved $1.391 billion for Alzheimer’s research at the National Institutes of Health, an increase of $400 million.
The Alzheimer’s disease research funding was included in the fiscal year 2017 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) Appropriations bill, the first bipartisan Labor-HHS Appropriations bill in seven years, which passed by a vote of 29 to 1. This investment would build on recent successful efforts to increase research funding for Alzheimer’s, like the historic $350 million increase for Alzheimer’s research that Congress passed with strong support from Senator Collins in 2015.
“As Co-Chair of the Senate Alzheimer’s Task Force, working to increase federal funding to fight Alzheimer’s has long been one of my top legislative priorities,” said Senator Collins. “Alzheimer’s takes a tremendous personal and economic toll on more than five million Americans and their families. In addition to the human suffering it causes, Alzheimer’s costs the United States an estimated $236 billion a year, including $160 billion in costs to Medicare and Medicaid, yet we are spending just a fraction of that on research.”
“The $400 million increase included in this bipartisan legislation would bring our total investment for Alzheimer’s research to nearly $1.4 billion and represents tremendous progress in our work to reach the $2 billion a year the Alzheimer’s Advisory Council has determined is necessary to meet our goal of preventing and effectively treating Alzheimer’s by 2025. This increased investment will help our nation’s research community continue the significant progress that is currently underway and bring us one step closer to our goal of achieving a world where Alzheimer’s can be treated, cured, and—best of all—prevented,” Senator Collins continued.
In 2011, Senator Collins introduced the National Alzheimer’s Project Act with then-Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN). That law convened a panel of experts, who determined that $2 billion per year in research funding is needed to achieve our goal of preventing and treating Alzheimer’s by the year 2025.
