The Park City Wasatch Back Alzheimer’s Walk is scheduled for August 24th. They’re holding their first meeting tonight at the Jeremy Ranch Golf Club at 8770 Jeremy Road at 5:30. If you can’t make tonight’s meeting, they welcome all who are interested to join the meeting next month. They’ll hold monthly organizing meetings between now and August.
There are multiple volunteer opportunities for the Alzheimer’s Walk. Deb Morton is active with the group and says the registration is open now for the walk in August. They hope to have 500 walkers participate this year. Teams raise sponsorship money. Last year they raised over $100 thousand-dollars. About 70 percent of the money raised by the walk, stays here in Utah and a good portion of those funds support the Park City Wasatch Back Alzheimer’s Association.
"They would be helping us to plan the walk. Some people would be looking for sponsorships. Some people would be looking for volunteers the day of. Some people would be recruiting teams and then there’s team retention. We also need people for advocacy. On the 28th, I believe, is Alzheimer’s Advocacy Day. We’ll be going down to the Legislature. So, there are lots of different volunteer opportunities, large and small.”
Currently five and a half million people in the US are afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s expected to grow to 15 million. Ray Freer, who recently lost his wife, Mary, to Alzheimer’s disease and cancer, wants to help raise awareness about the affects the disease has on society.
“For every Alzheimer’s victim it requires approximately three caregivers to be involved at all times, off and on, of course. So, at a three to one ration, you’re talking about an additional 15million caregivers. That’s 20 million in our population that are involved with Alzheimer’s right now. They say by 2050, it will grow to 15million Alzheimer’s victims and 45 million caregivers. So, that’s 60 million - 20 percent of our population."
Alzheimer’s is affected by genetics to some degree and Morton explains some of the lifestyle choices people can make to help prevent its onset.
“It is random. Genetics do play a portion. I have the gene on both sides of my family. And they say I have a 29 percent better chance of having Alzheimer’s. However, if you live a healthy lifestyle, which most of us in Park city try to do, between eating properly, exercising, keeping your brain stimulated, being social, reading a lot. Those are all things you can do to prevent it, as of now. Research is still being done and we hope next fall to have a panel of local researchers, there are quite a few at the U, to come and do an event in Park City.”
There’s a care giver support group which meets every third Wednesday of the month at 1 PM at the Lutheran Church on Silver Springs Drive next to the Blue Roof.
If you want to be a part of the advocacy group or the fundraising event, contact Deb Morton at dmorton450@gmail.com
