Summary

Maria Shriver, an award winning journalist, producer, author, and NBC News special anchor, was deeply moved by the movie “Still Alice”. The movie tells the story of a brilliant 50 year old professor who loses her brain to Alzheimer’s. Shriver felt that the movie thoroughly conveyed the terrifying realities of Alzheimer’s disease. Her father, Sargent Shriver, suffered from the disease. Although more than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s little is known about the disease. Every 67 seconds someone develops Alzheimer’s and women are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s as breast cancer. Today about 2/3 of those with Alzheimer’s are women and 60% of the Caregivers for people with Alzheimer’s are women. Shriver believes that because women are at the center of this disease, women are the solution. The government does not provide enough funding to research the disease or to cover the long term care of patients with Alzheimer’s. As a result, Shriver has launched the Wipe Out Alzheimer’s challenge to empower women to become educated about the disease and in turn educate others. She hopes that Wipe Out Alzheimer’s will create a community of women to understand, prevent, treat, and beat the disease