Today is Father’s Day, and Lynette Groenenboom of Grimes has found a special way to honor her father, who is living with frontotemporal dementia, also called Pick’s dementia.
Lynette visits her dad twice a week with her mom at his care facility in Perry, and she always brings him sweet tea and other treats because she knows how much he loves sweets.
Lynette’s dad was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2015 and soon entered a care facility. However, after just three months in the facility, he was able to come back home to live and the symptoms of his dementia subsided for several years, which is very uncommon.
Unfortunately, in 2019 his dementia started to progress again. Now Lynette advocates for other families like hers through the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement to improve dementia care, support and resources for caregivers and individuals living with the disease across Iowa and the U.S.
June is Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month, and June 20 is The Longest Day, a DIY fundraising campaign to fight the darkness of Alzheimer’s and dementia, that happens to fall this year on Father’s Day.
This year the Alzheimer’s Association and advocates like Lynette are advocating for:
- Appropriations of $289 million for Alzheimer’s research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- $20 million to implement the BOLD infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act
- Alzheimer’s Caregiver Support Act (S. 56/H.R.1474) to provide grants for training and support services for families and unpaid caregivers of individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia.
- Comprehensive Care for Alzheimer’s Act (S. 1125/H.R. 2517) calls on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) to implement a dementia care management model to test effectiveness of comprehensive care management services.
- The Equity in Neuroscience and Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials (ENACT) Act (S. 1548 / H.R. 3085) seeks to increase representation in Alzheimer’s clinical trials among traditionally underrepresented groups
For more information, visit the website of the Iowa Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.
