Hillary Clinton Campaign Press Release - Hillary Clinton's New Plan To Fight Alzheimer's Will Change This Man's Life

His story moved her to tears.

Hillary just announced a bold new $2 billion annual commitment to prevent, effectively treat, and make an Alzheimer's cure possible by 2025—and to provide needed relief to Alzheimer's patients and their families.

That would change life for millions of Americans—including Keith and his mother.

Keith's mother is one of the 5 million Americans suffering from Alzheimer's, and he can't afford to hire a caregiver for her during the day. So Keith brings his mother with him to the library where he works, in order to keep an eye on her. It's the only thing he can do.

It's the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, but we have no known cure for Alzheimer's, or even means of prevention. And each year, the number of people suffering from Alzheimer's grows—nearly 15 million Americans will suffer from the disease by 2050.

According to the Alzheimer's Association, almost everything we know about this disease has been learned over the last 15 years. That's thanks in large measure to significant federal investment in research programs. But that research is chronically underfunded.

So what inspired Hillary to make this commitment? Caregiving has been a cause near and dear to her heart for a long time ...

" My mother lived with us for the end of her life, and having her there was just an amazing blessing for me. It was such a joy to have her in my home. ... But I also know it was a sense of responsibility. Thankfully she was in pretty good health until she passed, but there were hospitalizations. There were doctor's appointments, the kinds of things that happen in every family that I know of. For a lot of caregivers though, it is much, much more than that."Hillary Clinton

And as she heard from people all over the country who were caring for loved ones or working around the clock to provide care as a home care worker, she knew she had to do something.

" I met a woman in one of my town halls in New Hampshire. ... She said that she was taking care of her husband who has Alzheimer's and her mother who has Alzheimer's. Same house, one woman taking care of both. She said, 'Look, I will do it. I want to do it. I love my husband and my mother. But isn't there any help I could get? We're spending all of our savings. We don't know how we're going to do this.' We've got to figure out how we're going to help."Hillary Clinton

When Keith got the opportunity to meet Hillary backstage before a speech, he told her about his mother and how hard their family is struggling to provide care for her.

"I wasn't planning to talk to her about that," he said after the meeting. "But in the moment, I was so moved by her commitment to fighting for better health care that I had to thank her."

"I was surprised that she got emotional," he added. "I never expected her to care that much about someone she just met. But we connected, and I could tell that she really cared. It was so moving."

As a nation, we have to do more to support our elders, and the families that care for them. We have to invest in research and scientific discovery. And we have to do everything we can to make the lives of our caregivers easier. Hillary will invest in the future and motivate change. It's time to make a cure possible.