Mayor’s anti-Alzheimer’s campaign
Published 4:26 pm Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Suffolk Mayor Linda T. Johnson has lent her support to a special women’s initiative organized by the Alzheimer’s Association.
The initiative, according to literature from the association, calls on a million woman “to use their amazing brains” to help wipe out the disease.
Women are invited to share with the world, at www.mybrain.alz.org, why their brains are amazing. “My brain matters and I’m using it to wipe out Alzheimer’s,” the tagline reads.
The initiative was inspired by a recent study by the association and Maria Shriver, executive producer of “Still Alice,” the film that just picked up a lead actress Oscar for Julianne Moore’s portrayal of an Alzheimer’s sufferer.
“The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s” found almost two-thirds of Americans with Alzheimer’s are women, while women account for 60 percent of unpaid caregivers for Alzheimer’s sufferers.
Johnson said she supports the association to increase awareness of the disease and raise money for research toward a cure.
She is the honorary chair of the Western Tidewater Walk to End Alzheimer’s, set for late September at Constant’s Wharf.
“I have been part of it for a number of years,” Johnson said. “To me, it’s a very, very cruel disease.”
It’s important to put as much money as possible toward finding an Alzheimer’s cure, she said, adding that while “so many illnesses” affect humanity, “I don’t believe I have ever seen a disease as cruel as Alzheimer’s.”
“We can deal with an illness we can understand, but when we lose our ability to understand, to me it’s just frightening,” Johnson said. “We need to do all we can do.”