Click here to make a donation in support of the Penn Memory Center.
Dear reader,
My name is Alan Cohen and I am writing to you both as the caregiver for my courageous wife, a patient at the Penn Memory Center, and as a doctor who has been personally engaged in clinical care and research for more than forty years. I am asking you to join me in honoring and supporting the Center’s incredible team of physicians, scientists, nurses, social workers and all of their associates at the Penn Memory Center who deliver extraordinary patient care while performing cutting edge research to discover new and more effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and other memory disorders. My wife and I have seen first-hand how all of the critical parts of the Penn Memory Center — research, patient care, and programming and counseling for caregivers — enhance each other while supporting families like ours.
At the Center, our care comes from our country’s leading medical specialists who have many decades of experience caring for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, and related memory problems. As a caregiver, I gratefully receive personalized counseling, support from health educators and many other resources that are made available to me and my family in an environment of warmth and empathy. The Center provides classes that give us and other families the skills to cope with the many changes of living with dementia and that also provide the opportunity to meet others going through a similar experience.
It is imperative that the Penn Memory Center continue to grow and expand the reach of this work. Grant funding supports the basic infrastructure of the Center and reflects its international stature. However, individual gifts from patients, families, friends and other benefactors are vital as these are the gifts that allow the Penn Memory Center to pursue and sustain innovative efforts in clinical research and caregiver support. In my own work with children with blood diseases, I have seen how extraordinary advances in the fight against disease emerge almost exclusively when programs that address the needs of patients and caregivers are fully integrated with research, and I am absolutely convinced that this strategy at the Penn Memory Center is the key to changing the lives of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other memory disorders.
As a caregiver I am very appreciative of the support and education that I receive from the Penn Memory Center. I know that these services are funded by ongoing, unrestricted donations from friends like you, and can only advance with your help. So in this season of giving and thanks, I hope you join me in making a gift to the Penn Memory Center to help advance their vital programs and services.
Click here to make a donation in support of the Penn Memory Center.
Sincerely,
Dr. Alan Cohen
Professor and Emeritus Chair of Pediatrics
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania