Raising awareness of Alzheimer’s through the lens of the disease’s impact on families’ financial well-being informs legislators from a different perspective, in addition to enrolling them to help craft solutions or increase government funding for research.
On a community level, financial advisors can team up with local organizations—or their local chapter of the Alzheimer's Association—to educate communities on the financial burden of Alzheimer’s for individual families and the country as a whole.
Strategic partnerships also present an opportunity to align like-minded organizations to make a wider and more powerful impact. For our part, we’ve renewed a five-year strategic alliance with the Alzheimer’s Association. We structured our partnership and total investment over the course of 10 years to greatly enhance care and support programs, provide educational materials for our clients and associates and advance critical Alzheimer’s research.
Partnerships help integrate the mission into organizations’ culture, giving their employees a compelling and formidable rallying point. This energizes financial advisors to discuss the disease with their clients, provide training around it, engage in Alzheimer’s outreach and participate collectively in associated activities in their communities.
Each financial institution that enters the fight against Alzheimer’s and lends their considerable support brings us closer to a cure and helps to reduce the disease’s impact on individuals and families. We can maximize our impact through adopting a holistic approach to our efforts, one that includes employee education, government advocacy and strategic partnerships.
Ken Cella is principal of the client strategies group at Edward Jones.