The Wetzel Foundation PURE Initiative
The Wetzel Foundation is dedicated to helping our nation’s top researchers discover treatments and cures for both ALS and dementia-related diseases. While The ALS Association’s 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge significantly increased awareness of the disease and raised an unprecedented amount of funding, proper funding remains very much an issue. Dementia-related d
iseases are currently among the top ten causes of death in America. The number of Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s alone is expected to more than double by 2050. Unfortunately, research funding for brain disease lags behind funding for all other diseases in the top ten. The Wetzel Foundation’s PURE (Positive Unrestricted Research Efforts) Initiative offers targeted funding to researchers at the top neuroscience departments in the country. In order to ensure the level of innovation and discovery that we need right now, PURE allows the researchers themselves determine how to best apply the money. Currently, PURE funding is going to two institutions:
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY FEINBURG SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
The Wetzel Foundation Research and Education Fund
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
The Eadie Wetzel Davis Research Fund
The Wetzel Foundation New Normal Movement
End-of-life (EOL) decisions are some of the most important anyone can make. But according to a 2013 national survey by The Conversation Project, less than 30% of people have discussed what they or their family wants when it comes to EOL care. What happens when you have to make EOL decsions for others? What if that person can’t speak for him- or herself and you don’t know their wishes? Two factors are making that situation increasingly more likely. The first is that thanks to medical advances, Americans are dying older. The second has to do with one segment of medicine that isn’t advancing fast enough: dementia-related diseases are on the rise. A 2007 study funded by the National Institutes for Health found that one in seven Americans over the age of 71 suffered from some kind of dementia. These diseases are incurable, untreatable and often rob people of their ability to make decisions. Luckily, there is a way to make to those decisions known. It’s called an advanced directive document (or “living will”). It’s a document that states a person’s wishes for the end of life and names a proxy to carry out those wishes if the person is unable to speak for themself. In most states, you can download the document for free. Filling it out doesn’t require a lawyer. All adults—especially baby boomers—should have one. And yet, most Americans don’t. The problem is that people don’t want to talk or think about death. Parents don’t want to think about their mortality. Their children don’t want to think about losing them. It’s a difficult conversation to have. But what everyone needs to understand is that this conversation is an act of love. The time has come for the children of the baby boomer generation to start the conversation. The New Normal Movement is the Wetzel Foundation’s initiative to foster these conversations. In addition, we offer resources to make the process of creating documents as simple as possible. In this way we hope to ensure that a living will is something that every parent has and that every family understands.
