Prioritizing Women's Brain Health Can Save Lives and Global Economies, Leading Alzheimer's Organizations Warn
Key Insights
Women account for nearly two-thirds of Alzheimer's diagnoses and provide the majority of unpaid dementia (search) care, yet their brain health remains under-studied and underprioritized in research.
The WHO estimates dementia (search) costs the global economy $1.3 trillion currently, projected to rise to $2.8 trillion by 2030, with roughly half attributed to informal caregiving.
Three leading organizations—Alzheimer's Research UK (search), the Alzheimer's Association, and the Women's Alzheimer's Movement at Cleveland Clinic (search)—issued a joint call for urgent investment in sex-specific research, representative clinical trials, and policy reform.
As thousands of the world's leading Alzheimer's researchers, clinicians, and policymakers convene this week in London for the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2026, three prominent organizations have issued an urgent joint declaration: women's brain health must become central to global health policy, or the consequences will reverberate across every family, community, and economy worldwide.
Alzheimer's Research UK (search), the Alzheimer's Association, and the Women's Alzheimer's Movement at Cleveland Clinic (search) are sounding the alarm that women's health has been narrowly compartmentalized into reproductive health, breast cancer, heart health, and bone health—while the organ that regulates every part of a woman's body, the brain, has been conspicuously absent from the conversation. "Women's health is brain health, and brain health is the core of women's health," the organizations stated in their joint commentary, authored by Maria Shriver, Joanne Pike, and Hilary Evans-Newton.
The Disproportionate Burden on Women
Women make up nearly two-thirds of those diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (search). Beyond diagnosis, women are far more likely to provide the unpaid care that sustains families and care systems. Yet women's brains remain "largely under-studied, under-discussed, and underprioritized in research, risk reduction and care," the authors emphasized.
The economic toll is staggering. The World Health Organization estimates that dementia (search) currently costs the global economy $1.3 trillion, a figure expected to surge to $2.8 trillion by 2030. In the United Kingdom alone, dementia stands as the leading cause of death for women and costs the country more than £42 billion annually—projected to more than double to roughly £90 billion by 2040.
The Hidden Economy of Unpaid Care
Roughly half of dementia (search)'s total economic burden is attributed to informal care provided by family and friends. In the UK, complex dementia care can cost up to £80,500 per person per year. In the United States, unpaid caregiving is estimated to cost the economy $855.6 billion each year, including $261 billion in lost wages, early retirement, and reduced productivity.
"Half of the dementia (search) economy rests on the unpaid labour of people who never applied for the job," the authors wrote. "Once again, those people are mostly women."
A Three-Pronged Call to Action
The coalition, which is already investing tens of millions of dollars to place women at the center of Alzheimer's risk reduction, research, and caregiver support, outlined three essential policy and research priorities.
First, they called for urgent funding of dementia (search) research with a specific focus on understanding why women's brains differ, alongside prioritizing representative clinical trial recruitment. This includes ensuring proportional inclusion of women across every culture, country, and community involved in studies, with results reported by sex.
Second, the organizations demanded that governments be held accountable to their commitments, renewing dedication to the WHO global dementia (search) plan and ensuring that every country adopts a national plan of action by 2031.
Third, they insisted that unpaid care be formally recognized as work. "It may be given with love, but it is still labour," the authors noted, calling for policy solutions that prevent women from being forced to choose between caring for a loved one and earning income for their families.
"The future of Alzheimer's will be shaped by the choices we make now," the organizations concluded. "If we invest in women's brain health, we can change the trajectory of this disease for women around the world. By failing to act in a coordinated, comprehensive way, we are paying for that failure many times over in health costs, in lost productivity, in exhausted families, and in diminished lives."