The Alliance’s Our Best Shot campaign promotes the importance of CDC-recommended vaccines, tackles misinformation and disinformation, and arms older adults with factual information.

This year, the Alliance produced Flu and You: Getting the Right Vaccine for Your Age – a new educational film focused on the preferential influenza vaccines recommended for older adults. The film broadly covers the importance of the flu vaccine with a heightened focus on the CDC’s recommendation for three types of preferential vaccines — adjuvanted, high-dose, and recombinant – since most older adults and even many healthcare professionals are still not clear on the differences. The educational film was advertised on YouTube and garnered more than 868,000 views.

The recently updated Quick Guide to Vaccination outlines the symptoms and potential complications of infectious diseases that have available vaccines, lays out the recommended vaccines for adults ages 65+, and provides a tear-off vaccine tracker for wallets to help keep vaccine history organized. This year it was updated to include updated recommendations and guidance on vaccines and boosters.

Last year’s educational shingles film, Shingles: What You Need to Know to Avoid a World of Pain, was shortened into a 30-second and 60-second public service announcement (PSA). These shortened PSAs are easy to share on social media, in digital marketing, and on TV. They were marketed on Facebook, YouTube, and on Connected TV—which are videos played on a Roku or other device that turns a TV into a smart TV— and garnered a combined 624,000 views.

This year’s educational PSAs on RSV, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV): Not Just a Little Kids’ Virus, Explained in 30 Seconds and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV): Not Just a Little Kids’ Virus, Explained in 60 Seconds, were marketed on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and targeted healthcare practitioners including geriatricians and general/family medicine practitioners. The ads ran until the end of 2024 and the shortened videos were viewed 1.1 million times combined.

Talk NERDY (Nurturing Engagement in Research and Development with You) held a dementia-specific training in May 2024 for 12 participants. The majority of the participants are also on the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials Consortium (ACTC) Research Advisory Board. Training focused on analyzing clinical trials research from a patient perspective and discussing how patients can be actively and effectively involved in research as both participants and advisors. Talk NERDY also got a mention at the 2024 NIH Alzheimer’s Research Summit in September as a model for programs that help patients become research advisors.

The Alliance-led Aging in Motion (AIM) campaign raises awareness of sarcopenia — a condition involving the progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength that results in functional decline and loss of independence.

More than 1,200 registrants tuned in for the Alliance-hosted webinar Preventing and Treating Muscle Loss with Age: Nutrition & Exercise for Health and Independence. The webinar featured expert advice from Jack Guralnik, MD, MPH, PhD; Roger Fielding, PhD; and Susan Roberts, PhD. The program offered a deep dive into muscle health, sarcopenia, and how to improve quality of life in older age.

At the GSA 2024 Annual Scientific Meeting in Seattle, Wash., the Alliance supported the session, “Sarcopenia: No Consensus, No Diagnostic Criteria, and No Approved Indication. How Did We Get Here?” which featured a panel of experts including William Evans, PhD; Peggy Cawthon, PhD, MPH; Stuart Phillips, PhD; and Giulia Coletta, BSc, highlighting the challenges and opportunities in diagnosing and treating sarcopenia.

The Alliance marketed the 2020 film on sarcopenia, Sarcopenia: Taking Charge of Your Muscle Health As You Age, which has more than 94,000 views.

The 17th Annual FDA/ACT-AD Allies Meeting convened experts from academia; biomedical companies; the FDA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH); as well as members of the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) community. The goal of the meeting was to foster connection and meaningful dialogue around emerging issues and effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. The discussions highlighted sex and gender differences, emerging technologies in digital health for both diagnosis and treatment, and appropriate medical treatment for neuropsychiatric symptoms.

The meeting also featured an informative fireside chat with Dr. Teresa Buracchio, Director of the FDA Center for Neuroscience. Dr. Buracchio addressed FDA’s focus on inclusivity, precision medicine and data sharing, and advances in the use of blood-based biomarkers.

In its eighth year marking Heart Valve Disease Awareness Day, the Alliance was joined on February 22, 2024, and throughout American Heart Month by 127 partners dedicated to improving earlier detection and intervention of heart valve disease.

A webinar “Heart Valve Disease: Its Effects on the Black Community,” was held in partnership with the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging (NCBA). The webinar included a presentation by Dr. Aaron Horne, Jr., a cardiologist at Summit Health, who offered a comprehensive overview of heart valve disease, including risk factors, symptoms, treatment, and specific risks for Blacks and African Americans and underscored disparities in access to healthcare, socioeconomic factors, and the systemic barriers that exist which contribute to the increased prevalence and severity of valve disease in these communities.

The campaign and its partners reached consumers and patients through radio media tours, TV PSAs, op-ed campaigns, press releases, large-scale screening events, press events, and more. The awareness day spanned multiple countries this year, with screening events hosted across Canada, concerts, VIP receptions, and educational symposiums hosted by Rock from the Heart, and free events and educational session by Heart Valve Voice US and Women Heart, among many others. Through these efforts we were able to reach more than 2.8 million listeners through a radio media tour, 351 press release pick-ups, and 3.1 million activations.

The Project PAUSE coalition continued its legislative and regulatory efforts to ensure that residents in long-term care settings (e.g., Skilled Nursing Facility, nursing home, assisted-living setting) who have Alzheimer’s or a related disease, and other neuropsychiatric conditions receive high-quality, patient-centered, appropriate care and treatment without facing stigma or coverage barriers. The Alliance in partnership with the American Society for Consultant Pharmacists (ASCP) responded to a request for comment on proposed minimum staffing standards for long-term care from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

In 2024, Project PAUSE facilitated a bi-partisan Dear Colleague letter from influential members of the House of Representatives to CMS that asked the agency to revisit its nursing home quality measures on antipsychotics. Additionally, the report language we secured in 2023 in the House of Representatives’ Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriations Bill led the FDA to conduct an updated evidence review on whether its antipsychotics boxed warning for people with dementia is scientifically supported for the entire class of therapeutics. The workshop, titled, “Mortality and Antipsychotic Use in Dementia-Related Behavioral Disorders” was held in December.

Through our ICERfacts.org campaign, the Alliance is leading efforts to ensure that older adults and people with disabilities are not discriminated against when insurance companies decide how much a medication or therapeutic is “worth.”

Unfortunately, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) produces reports that use the Quality Adjusted Life year (QALY) and similar metrics that value treating young individuals in good health as more cost-effective than treating older adults and people with disabilities. Insurance companies and other public payers like Medicare and the Veteran’s Administration then use ICER reports to decide whether it’s worth providing coverage for certain treatments. This justifies rationing care, often to the people who need it most.

In 2024, the Alliance pushed for improved methods and ensured patient access to care, lobbied for passage of H.R. 485, the Protecting Health Care for All Patients Act of 2023, which passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2024. In August, the Alliance, working with Milliman, published, “A new framework for quantifying healthcare value using real-world evidence,” which debuted a novel methodology for value assessment — Standard of Living Valuation — that benefits patients, promotes equity, and utilizes real-world evidence.

The Alliance’s Project LOOP team worked closely with the Medicare program in advance of the agency’s implementation of a new $2,000 annual limit on Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses for Part D prescription drugs, and the ability to pay OOP costs over time in zero-interest payment installments. In 2024, the Alliance secured report language in the House and Senate LHHS Appropriations bill, though if that language goes into effect will depend broadly on what happens with the federal spending bills for FY 2025. At the end of 2024, CMS adopted LOOP recommendations in proposed rule on Part D, specifically the recommendation to allow patients to enroll in the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan at the Point of Sale.

The Alliance continued to lead efforts to mitigate the potential unintended consequences that can stem from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), most concernedly toward older adults on the Medicare program facing reduced access to needed medications and therapeutics.

In response to these changes, the Alliance produced a new film, How Medicare Drug Coverage Changes Will Impact You in 2025, that details upcoming cost-saving changes to Medicare Part D plans and what beneficiaries need to do to take advantage of these options. The film explains how to decrease out-of-pocket costs for prescriptions and tries to demystify the process of signing up. The film was shortened into a 30-second and 60-second PSA, and the full film and PSAs were translated into Spanish. In addition to a marketing campaign, the films and PSAs were also shared with Hill offices and partner groups and received more than 1 million views.

Live Events Shine Light on IRA

The Alliance sponsored two live events in 2024 hosted by The Hill highlighting unintended consequences of the IRA.

The first, “Medicare & Drug Pricing: Time to Think Differently,” discussed lessons learned from the first round of Medicare drug price negotiation and how CMS can set impactful guardrails and better prioritize patient outcomes. Speakers included:

• Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), member of the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Health
• Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee
• Dana P. Goldman, University Professor of Public Policy, Pharmacy & Economics, University of Southern California; Founding Director, Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service
• Daneen Sekoni, Vice President of Policy & Advocacy, Cancer Support Community
• Dr. Jennifer Ellis, Co-Chair, Health & Public Policy Committee, Association of Black Cardiologists & Cardiac Surgeon; Cardiac Surgeon

The second, “Bang for Your Buck: Get the Most from Your 2025 Medicare Drug Benefits,” was held during Medicare Open Enrollment and stressed the need for beneficiaries to be aware of two major changes: a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, and the opportunity to smooth out-of-pocket costs into monthly payments over the plan year. Speakers included:

• Bruce Pyenson, Former Principal & Consulting Actuary with Milliman, and former MedPAC Commissioner
• Tom Kornfield, Founder & CEO, MAST Health Policy Solution
• Amy Niles, Chief Mission Officer, PAN Foundation
• Dr. Gary Puckrein, President and CEO, National Minority Quality Forum
• Julia Schrieber, Program Director, State Health Insurance Assistance Program, Maryland Department of Aging

Obesity is a public health crisis, affecting nearly half of all Americans and significantly increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders and cancer. Although medications are now proven to help people with obesity, until recently CMS interpreted a provision of the Social Security Act (SSA) to mean that CMS cannot cover AOMs under the prescription drug benefit. The Alliance, working with Akin Gump, published a white paper in November, “White Paper: CMS Has the Legal Authority to Cover Anti-Obesity Medications,” that laid out the legal argument for how CMS had misinterpreted the SSA statute and does have the existing authority to cover AOMS. Shortly thereafter, CMS released a new proposed rule that, if enacted as written, would have allowed for Medicare coverage of AOMs, however this was canceled.

The Alliance’s Partners in Healthy Aging Innovation (PHAI) includes company members that provide unrestricted support to advance activities related to the Alliance’s overall mission and vision. PHAI members participated in the Board of Directors in-person event, which provided opportunities to interact with the Alliance’s key staff and leaders in the healthy aging community. 

Thank you to our sponsors:

Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc.

Amgen USA Inc.

Applied Policy, LLC

Biogen Inc. 

Bristol Myers Squibb Company

Genentech, Inc. 

GlaxoSmithKline

Johnson & Johnson 

Novo Nordisk Inc.

Omnicom Health Group 

In 2024, This is Growing Old set a new record for listens: 9,778. Podcast episodes covered topics spanning the Inflation Reduction Act, safe Internet navigation and spotting scams, embracing a second act, and being your own health advocate. Our episodes are catalogued on YouTube in addition to all major streaming platforms, and the video component of the episodes has an additional 1,000 views. The podcast was recognized by The Wall Street Journal as a “Best Podcast of 2024.”

Our weekly Hump Day emails to the Alliance Board and partners continue to provide bite–sized tidbits of information on our recent work every Wednesday. From detailed wonky updates on Policy and “CMS Watch” news, to lighter news, staff updates, and obscure awareness days, our Hump Day messages are popular with our audiences and often mentioned when we “meet IRL” (in real life).