The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement has significantly changed our nation’s conversation around health and chronic disease. Since President Trump has taken office, the MAHA movement has secured major wins both at the national and state levels – with Gov. Reynolds just signing Iowa’s own MAHA bill with Secretary Kennedy this past month.
The Trump administration deserves the credit for recognizing that we as a country spend too much time treating illness instead of trying to prevent it in the first place – and that message has gained real momentum. Whether it’s removing harmful additives in our food, promoting parental choice with vaccinations, launching new whole-foods-based guidelines, or tackling childhood chronic disease, the movement has sparked conversations around long term wellness and has made significant strides towards Making America Healthy Again.
But there’s one health crisis that fits directly with the MAHA movement that hasn’t received the attention it deserves – Alzheimer’s.
Alzheimer’s Disease has quietly grown to position itself at the center of America’s chronic disease crisis. This silent epidemic now affects over 7 million Americans over the age of 65 and has become the sixth leading cause of death in the nation. It is the only top-ten cause of death in the U.S. without a cure. And in the coming decades, the number of Americans living with the disease is expected to double.
Alzheimer’s devastates families emotionally, physically, and financially. It affects Americans from every socioeconomic background, and you’d be hard pressed to find somebody that doesn’t know someone that has been affected by it. That’s why President Trump and MAHA should continue the positive momentum the movement has gained by starting a national discussion on Alzheimer’s and adding it to the MAHA agenda.
The administration has the opportunity to lead on the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s, as they have already done so well with other pillars of the MAHA agenda.
By promoting healthier and preventative lifestyle actions through public health initiatives focused on exercise, diet, and sleep, we can begin mitigating and lowering our population’s chance of developing it. But this public health crisis can’t just be solved by promoting better health.
To fully address this growing health crisis, the administration must embrace American innovation to find a cure by continuing to research the disease. To better treat the disease, we must continue to prioritize early and accurate detection to give patients and their caregivers the information and time needed to make significant decisions about their life, health, and families. Not only should this movement prioritize health, research, and testing, but we should also prioritize expanding the access to the life-changing treatments we have. By ensuring patients are able to access new blood tests that can detect the disease before someone shows signs of it and the FDA approved treatments that are proven to slow the disease, we can buy patients and their caregivers significant time and cut the extreme cost burdens our medical system faces because of it.
The Trump administration and the MAHA movement has already taken many positive steps towards making America Healthy Again through its countless actions to fight childhood obesity, update food guidelines, promote exercise, and more. The movement has proven that there’s an enormous public hunger to get to the bottom of why Americans are getting sicker. By launching a national initiative towards preventing and finding a cure for Alzheimer’s and adding it to the MAHA agenda, we can cut the significant economic drain our healthcare system faces, reduce the number of patients and families suffering from Alzheimer’s, and demonstrate our nation’s commitment to tackling one the greatest health crises of our lifetimes.
MAHA and Trump have already secured significant wins. Adding Alzheimer’s to the agenda could lead to one largest healthcare wins in American history.
- Kelley Koch
RN, BSN, MS
Former chair, Dallas County Republicans
Retired healthcare professional
