An Alzheimer’s agenda for Annapolis

Yesterday, residents from across the state made their way to Annapolis for Alzheimer’s Association’s Maryland Advocacy Day. Their mission is to let their legislators know how Alzheimer’s disease impacts their lives and to ask for support for three legislative priorities: community support for dementia caregivers, full funding of Maryland’s State Alzheimer’s Plan and expansion of existing services for seniors to age in place.

These requests are personal. More than 110,000 Marylanders live with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia. Their family members are the estimated 242,000 caregivers, with their own health challenges: 69% have chronic health conditions, 28% have depression, and 14% report having poor physical health. Yet they persevere, providing nearly 371 million hours of unpaid care valued at $6.8 billion.

To help families find resources where they live, Del. Bonnie Cullison (Montgomery County) and Sen. Pamela Beidle (Anne Arundel County) sponsored legislation to engage and aid dementia caregivers. The bill would create an outreach program for dementia caregivers at each Maryland local aging department, which could provide services for outreach events to identify and assess people with cognitive issues. Communities would be educated about dementia and receive information about care providers, specialists and dementia support groups. This legislation provides the much-needed, first-ever state-specific funding for dementia caregiving.

Additionally, the Alzheimer’s Association is requesting $3.5 million in permanent funding for the Cognitive Health program — a part of the Maryland Department of Health’s (MDH) Prevention and Health Promotion Administration — to provide resources for Maryland’s 2023-2026 Alzheimer’s State Plan. This funding is essential for the new Director of Dementia Services and Brain Health at MDH to implement the State Alzheimer’s Plan’s campaigns for public awareness, prevention and early detection.

Lastly, the Alzheimer’s Association is requesting a $21 million expansion of the Maryland Department of Aging’s (MDoA) Senior Care program. This initiative provides resources for people aged 65 and older who are at risk of nursing home placement or needing medical adult day services, medication management and other services. Yet there is a waitlist in each county for people needing the two to three hours of daily care these funds provide. Underfunding in home care creates a perpetual waitlist, with many people resorting to nursing home placement. Others die without having received needed support. This can and must change, particularly as there is no new additional funding for it in Gov. Wes Moore’s proposed fiscal year 2024 budget.

Please ask your legislators to support these proposed initiatives to improve the lives of our seniors with dementia and their caregivers. The beneficiaries are your friends, co-workers, and neighbors. On their behalf, the Alzheimer’s Association thanks you.

— David McShea and Jenette YoungThe writers are, respectively, executive director and board chair of the Alzheimer’s Association Greater Maryland Chapter.

Gun rights come with serious responsibilities

State Sen. William G. Folden, a Frederick County Republican, posed an asinine question when he asked Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher, a Montgomery County Democrat, whether pending gun safety legislation would keep someone illegally armed from walking into a movie theater and sitting next to him and his family. Since the senator is a Frederick police officer, he knows the answer to his ludicrous, baiting question. Of course, it wouldn’t prevent someone from illegally being armed in a declared no-gun zone. In his case, he would probably be legally armed anyway as a sworn police officer, so his family is safer than others in the theater, assuming he can hit his target without collateral damage (“Maryland Senate hears testimony on bills to further regulate where guns can be carried, who can buy them,” Feb. 8).

The proposed law is no different from those outlawing acts like murder, rape, robbery or burglary. Such laws don’t “prevent’’ these crimes from being perpetrated — that’s the purpose of the punishment. So why have them at all? Senator Folden’s argument that some “wanna be a hero” and will be sufficiently trained to take action in a high-stress situation like a gunfight in a movie theater (or any other no-gun public area because police can’t be everywhere) begs credulity.

Then, by all means, allow people to be legally armed everywhere, but when the so-called constitutional right to be armed in self-defense results in the commission of crime — or collateral damage like hitting the 10-year-old child sitting behind the “bad guy” with the gun — make sure the punishment is severe enough for violating that “right” in both situations.

So when Senator Folden mouths a “right” to be legally armed for non-police officers in any and all areas of public life, I ask him what duties does this so-called right impose on me and others? It is a bit of a trope as there are no rights without responsibilities.

— Jim Giza, Baltimore