HDMZ Unveils 'Your Brain Will Thank You' Campaign in Partnership With the Illinois Brain Health Project
CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 15, 2025--
HDMZ, a leading life science communications and growth agency, today unveiled the debut of 'Your Brain Will Thank You,' a multichannel campaign to boost brain health and combat cognitive decline — including Alzheimer's disease and dementia — across Illinois. The campaign was co-developed with the Illinois Brain Health Project, a broad public health initiative designed to educate the public about safeguarding brain health, particularly for high-risk communities.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250415250497/en/
HDMZ and the Illinois Brain Health Project launch 'Your Brain Will Thank You,' a lively campaign to promote brain health across Illinois through simple steps like walking or sleeping well.
This year, more than 260,000 Illinois residents over 65 are projected to have Alzheimer's disease or related dementias — a 13% jump from 2024 — amid a worsening shortage of direct care providers in aging, disability, and public health networks. 1 This rising crisis highlights the urgent need for an engaging, accessible resource hub that equips all Illinois residents with the tools to combat cognitive decline through healthier choices and by addressing modifiable risk factors such as poor diet, inactivity, and social isolation.
'This is exactly the kind of work that energizes our team, and we're proud to support health and science,' said Dillon Allie, president & CEO of HDMZ. 'The fact is, cognitive decline doesn't discriminate. It's a critical issue we need to build more awareness around, particularly in underserved communities.'
Driving the multichannel campaign is a charming mascot — a friendly brain character — that shares simple, everyday actions people can take to keep their brains healthy. Whether it's increasing time spent with friends, walking outdoors, or picking healthier meals, the campaign encourages small changes that can have a big impact.
'Our creative insight was to remove as much friction as possible, making it easier for people to engage with practical tools and tips that help reduce their risk of cognitive decline,' added Allie. 'Many people tend to overlook brain health until it's too late. So we focused our campaign on creating an approachable, relatable experience that sparks action.'
In addition to collaborating with HDMZ on this campaign, The Illinois Brain Health Project has forged key partnerships with state health leaders and nonprofit organizations — including the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Alzheimer's Association Illinois Chapter, and AARP Illinois — to deliver critical brain health resources across the state.
''Your Brain Will Thank You' truly embodies the ethos of promoting healthy living,' said Delia Jervier, executive director of the Alzheimer's Association Illinois Chapter. 'For the first time, studies have shown that we have the ability to reduce risk through lifestyle choices. Making sure all Illinois residents are equipped with this knowledge is vital. We're excited to be working with so many partners, including HDMZ. The team's incredible creativity and expertise shone through in this campaign, with characters and insights that make brain health feel urgent and relatable, thereby helping us connect more Illinois residents to vital resources to support brain health and thrive.'
The campaign will be visible through online advertising, community outreach, public service announcements, and social media, all tailored for relevance and accessibility across Illinois's varied demographics.
To learn more about how to take your brain health back into your hands, check out yourbrainwillthankyou.com today.
About HDMZ
HDMZ is an integrated communications and growth company helping the world's leading life science organizations shape the future of science and health. Using evidence, innovation and imagination to tell their stories, we tackle complex challenges and drive growth.
References:
View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250415250497/en/
CONTACT: Media Contact
John Kang
Senior Vice President, Public Relations
Email:[email protected]
Phone: 309-310-4537
KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA ILLINOIS
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: OTHER HEALTH OTHER SCIENCE RESEARCH MENTAL HEALTH FITNESS & NUTRITION SCIENCE SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING MANAGED CARE DIGITAL MARKETING OTHER COMMUNICATIONS GENERAL HEALTH NEUROLOGY PUBLIC RELATIONS/INVESTOR RELATIONS MARKETING HEALTH CONTENT MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA
SOURCE: HDMZ
Copyright Business Wire 2025.
PUB: 04/15/2025 05:00 AM/DISC: 04/15/2025 05:00 AM
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250415250497/en
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
There's a new blood test for Alzheimer's. Here's everything you need to know.
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently cleared a blood test that detects signs of Alzheimer's disease in the brain, according to multiple studies. This is the first-ever blood test available for this common form of dementia. Here's how the new blood test works and why it could be useful to patients. Alzheimer's disease is on the rise, in part because the age group most prone to dementia is growing larger. In the U.S., an estimated 7.2 million Americans ages 65 and older are living with Alzheimer's dementia in 2025. The percentage of affected people increases with age: About 5% of people ages 65 to 74 have Alzheimer's, compared with more than 33% of people ages 85 and older. At the point when a doctor has verified that a patient has cognitive decline, the blood test can be used in place of standard tests to see if they likely have Alzheimer's. Previously, gold-standard methods of diagnosing Alzheimer's have been more invasive and expensive, involving positron emission tomography (PET) scans, which use radioactive substances; and lumbar punctures, (also called spinal taps) during which a clinician uses a needle to sample spinal fluid from the low back. Clinicians also sometimes use MRIs or CT scans to rule out other causes of cognitive decline. The new test measures the ratio of two proteins in human blood, and this ratio correlates with the presence or absence of amyloid plaques, a primary sign of Alzheimer's found in the brain. For people experiencing memory lapses that might be due to Alzheimer's, the first step is to see their primary care physician (PCP), who should do a cognitive test. If there are signs of cognitive impairment, the patient would then be referred to a neurologist for an in-depth evaluation. Both dementia specialists and PCPs will be able to order this blood test to help with diagnosis, said Dr. Gregg Day, a neurologist with the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida; Day led a study of the blood test published in June in the Journal of the Alzheimer's Association. A study published in 2024 in JAMA found that whether the test was ordered by a PCP or specialist, it was equally accurate at confirming suspected Alzheimer's diagnoses. PCPs could use the test results to decide whether to refer patients to a specialist, who could prescribe treatments such as lecanemab or donanemab, Day said. Or the PCP could personally prescribe a medicine like donepezil, which can help improve mental function in Alzheimer's. With FDA clearance, Medicare and private health insurance providers alike are expected to cover the new blood test, Day said. The test — called the "Lumipulse G pTau217/ß-Amyloid 1-42 Plasma Ratio" — is intended for people ages 55 and older who show signs and symptoms of cognitive decline that have been confirmed by a clinician. The test is designed for the early detection of amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. (Amyloid plaques are unusual clumps found between brain cells and made up of a type of protein called beta-amyloid.) Related: Man nearly guaranteed to get early Alzheimer's is still disease-free in his 70s — how? Early detection is important, said Dr. Sayad Ausim Azizi, clinical chief of behavioral neurology and memory disorders at the Yale School of Medicine. That's because the Alzheimer's brain is like a rusty engine — the plaque is like rust settling onto the engine, interfering with the wheels' ability to turn, Azizi told Live Science. There are FDA-approved treatments that act like oil, helping the wheels to turn, but the medication does not remove the rust itself, he said. Available therapies can slow down the degradation of the brain by about 30% to 40%, studies show, so the patient can retain function for longer. "If you're driving now and living independently and you don't take the medicine, it's likely in five years you won't be able to do all these things," Azizi said, providing a hypothetical example. "If you take the medicine, the five years are extended to eight." If adopted as intended, the new blood test could help more people access these treatments sooner. The test is not recommended for the purposes of screening the general population. It is intended only for people who have been found by a doctor to exhibit signs of Alzheimer's disease, Day and Azizi emphasized. Some amount of amyloid is present in the brain during healthy aging, so its presence doesn't guarantee someone will later have Alzheimer's. If the test detects signs of amyloid plaques 20 years before any cognitive symptoms surface, Azizi explained, it would not make sense to treat the patient at that time. "The treatments are not 100% benign," he added. To receive lecanemab, for example, patients must be able to receive an infusion every two weeks at first and every four weeks later on; donanemab is given every four weeks. Both medications can come with infusion-related reactions, such as headache, nausea and vomiting. Rarely, the treatment donanemab can cause life-threatening allergic reactions, and both lecanemab and donanemab have been tied to rare cases of brain swelling or bleeding in the brain. These latter side effects are related to "amyloid-related imaging abnormalities," which are structural abnormalities that appear on brain scans. The new test can give false positives, meaning a person can potentially test positive when they don't actually have Alzheimer's. That's because the signs of amyloid that the tests look for can be tied to other conditions. For instance, amyloid buildup in the brain could be a sign the kidneys are not functioning optimally, Day said, so he recommends also doing a blood test for kidney function when ordering the Alzheimer's blood test. The Mayo Clinic study included about 510 people, 246 of whom showed cognitive decline; the blood test confirmed 95% of those with cognitive symptoms had Alzheimer's. About 5.3% of cases showed a false negative on the blood test, while 17.6% of cases gave a false positive, Day said. Most of the false-positive patients still had Alzheimer's-like changes in their brains, but their symptoms were ultimately attributed to other diseases, such as Lewy body dementia, Day said. The Mayo study found that the blood test helped doctors distinguish Alzheimer's from these other forms of dementia. As is true of many clinical trials, evaluations of the test have primarily included populations that are healthier than average, Day said. These individuals are not only healthier at baseline, but are more likely to have health insurance and be white and non-Hispanic. So when the blood test is used in a broader population, there may be people with sleep apnea or kidney disease who test positive despite not having Alzheimer's, Day said. Some people with these health problems may also experience memory issues or cognitive impairment that's not caused by Alzheimer's disease. If the blood test points to amyloid buildup, doctors could order additional tests and ask patients about their sleep to help rule out these other possibilities. RELATED STORIES —Could vaccines prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease? —Study unravels whole new layer of Alzheimer's disease —Alzheimer's comes in at least 5 distinct forms, study reveals The test will give researchers a more precise idea of how a patient's clinical symptoms relate to the findings on their blood test, Azizi said. "It's a great way of using a biomarker [measurable sign of disease] in the blood to make an earlier diagnosis to give a drug" to slow disease progression, he said. Azizi added that this blood test could help track whether a treatment for Alzheimer's disease is working, which would be useful both for patients receiving approved medicines and those in trials of new drugs. Looking forward, researchers will also be able to evaluate how well blood-based testing works in more diverse populations, Day noted. This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Your Favorite Herb Could Soon Become a Key Treatment for Alzheimer's
Scientists have engineered diAcCA, a stable oral drug derived from carnosic acid in rosemary, intended to combat Alzheimer's by reducing inflammation and oxidative stress in the brain. In preclinical mouse studies, diAcCA has restored memory function, increased synaptic density, and reduced key Alzheimer's biomarkers, including amyloid-β and phosphorylated-tau proteins. The drug activates solely in inflamed brain areas and uses a compound already deemed safe by the FDA, potentially streamlining the path to human clinical trials and allowing for combination use with existing research shows that rosemary has more benefits than just enhancing the aroma and flavor of your next roast. It turns out that it may also serve as a secret ingredient in the fight against Alzheimer's disease, too. In February, researchers from The Scripps Research Institute published findings from their study on a new compound called diAcCA, which they designed as an oral medication that could one day hopefully help treat Alzheimer's disease. As the researchers explain, diAcCA is derived from carnosic acid (CA), a natural antioxidant found in rosemary and sage, which is already known to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress—two factors strongly linked to Alzheimer's progression in previous studies. The authors explained in a statement that carnosic acid works by activating enzymes in the body's "natural defense system." In its purest state, this acid is too unstable to serve as a viable drug therapy. However, they managed to create a stable form known as diAcCA, which they noted, once consumed, converts to carnosic acid in the gut and is then absorbed into the bloodstream. Their work, published in the journal Antioxidants, demonstrated that in mouse models, diAcCA could deliver therapeutic doses of carnosic acid to the brain, resulting in improved "memory and synaptic density." Their analysis also revealed a significant decrease in inflammation in the brain following treatment. 'By combating inflammation and oxidative stress with this diAcCA compound, we actually increased the number of synapses in the brain,' Stuart Lipton, MD, PhD, senior author and professor at Scripps, shared. 'We also took down other misfolded or aggregated proteins such as phosphorylated-tau and amyloid-β, which are thought to trigger Alzheimer's disease and serve as biomarkers of the disease process.' And perhaps most compelling of all, the scientists noted that the drug is activated solely by the inflammation it targets, making it active only in areas of the brain that combat inflammatory damage, thereby limiting side effects. Related: Regularly Eating Breakfast Could Shield You Against Age-Related Brain Changes, Study Finds 'We did multiple different tests of memory, and they were all improved with the drug,' Lipton added. 'And it didn't just slow down the decline; it improved virtually back to normal.' There's also more good news for these researchers. They noted that carnosic acid is already listed on the US Food and Drug Administration's 'generally regarded as safe' (GRAS) list, which could make clinical trials involving humans easier to conduct, as the ingredient itself wouldn't require additional FDA approval. According to Lipton, DiAcCA has the potential to work well in tandem with other Alzheimer's treatments, adding that 'it could make existing amyloid antibody treatments work better by taking away or limiting their side effects." He is not stopping at Alzheimer's, though. Lipton hopes to explore its use for other inflammatory disorders, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and Parkinson's disease in the future as well. Read the original article on Food & Wine
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Analysis of the European Hospitals Market 2025-2030: Investment Opportunities for Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, and Ireland
The market is poised for growth, driven by aging demographics, technological advances, and a shift to value-based care. Key opportunities lie in digital health, infrastructure upgrades, and workforce development. Addressing workforce shortages and integrating value-based models will be crucial for sustainability. European Hospital Market Dublin, June 13, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Europe Hospital Market, By Country, Competition, Forecast and Opportunities, 2020-2030F" has been added to offering. The Europe Hospital Market was valued at USD 0.85 Trillion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 1.09 Trillion by 2030, rising at a CAGR of 4.35%. This mature and advanced market is anchored by strong public healthcare systems, cutting-edge infrastructure, and a widespread commitment to universal care access. The sector's growth is being fueled by shifting demographics, especially aging populations, along with rapid technological progress and evolving patient expectations. To maintain performance and meet rising demand, hospitals are undergoing digital transformation, expanding service capacity, and focusing on operational modernization. Investments in digital health, workforce development, and facility upgrades are becoming critical. Meanwhile, the shift toward integrated, value-based care models is redefining hospital operations and emphasizing efficiency, outcome measurement, and long-term sustainability, ensuring hospitals remain central to Europe's healthcare landscape. Key Market Driver Aging Population and Chronic Disease Burden Europe's aging population and the resulting increase in chronic diseases are major factors propelling the hospital market. By 2030, the number of Europeans living with Alzheimer's and related dementias is expected to rise to 14 million, escalating the healthcare system's financial and operational demands. The projected economic impact of Alzheimer's care is set to exceed USD 721.37 billion by 2050. As per Eurostat, individuals aged 65 and older made up 21.1% of the EU's population in 2022, and this is forecasted to rise to 32.5% by 2100. Older populations are more prone to conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative disorders, and cancer, all of which increase hospital care needs. Consequently, hospitals are expanding geriatric and chronic care services, modernizing infrastructure, and adapting clinical operations to manage growing patient loads. Key Market Challenge Workforce Shortages and Talent Retention The shortage of skilled medical professionals - including nurses, general practitioners, and specialists - poses a significant challenge for hospitals across Europe. Contributing factors include an aging healthcare workforce, burnout, and early retirements, particularly in under-resourced public systems. Staffing shortages reduce care quality, extend wait times, and hinder hospitals' ability to scale operations or adopt innovative models. The increased use of temporary staffing and overtime also inflates labor costs. Addressing this challenge requires strategic investment in training programs, international recruitment, and adoption of automation technologies such as AI-driven diagnostics and robotic procedures to ease clinical burdens and improve workforce efficiency. Key Market Trend Integration of Value-Based Healthcare Models European hospitals are transitioning from fee-for-service to value-based healthcare (VBHC) models, which emphasize care quality, patient outcomes, and cost-effectiveness. Government mandates and payer incentives are accelerating this shift to improve healthcare delivery and financial sustainability. Hospitals are redesigning care pathways around bundled, patient-centered services with a focus on chronic disease management, preventative care, and post-discharge support. The implementation of performance-based KPIs is reshaping reimbursement models, promoting efficiency, and reducing readmissions. Advanced analytics and predictive tools are increasingly used to track outcomes, manage resources, and demonstrate value - ultimately strengthening hospitals' competitiveness and long-term viability in the evolving European health ecosystem. Key Market Players Profiled: HCA Healthcare UK Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA Spire Healthcare Group plc Orpea Group Asklepios Klinik Barmbek Sana Kliniken AG San Donato Group (Gruppo San Donato) Report Scope In this report, the Europe Hospital Market has been segmented into the following categories: Europe Hospital Market, By Product: Public Private Europe Hospital Market, By Type: General Specialty Multi-Speciality Europe Hospital Market, By Type of Services: In-Patient Services Out-Patient Services Europe Hospital Market, By Bed Capacity: Up to 100 beds 100-500 beds Above 500 beds Europe Hospital Market, By Country: Germany France United Kingdom Italy Spain Netherlands Switzerland Sweden Belgium Ireland Key Attributes Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 125 Forecast Period 2024-2030 Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2024 $0.85 Trillion Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2030 $1.09 Trillion Compound Annual Growth Rate 4.3% Regions Covered Europe For more information about this report visit About is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Attachment European Hospital Market CONTACT: CONTACT: Laura Wood,Senior Press Manager press@ For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./ CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
