When I talk about the ASAP Act, the word I keep coming back to is “early.” It’s the whole point — and it’s the key to understanding why this bill is so urgent. 

▶ Watch Episode 7: Why Early Matters 

Picture someone you know in their late 60s or early 70s. Still working, or volunteering, or watching the grandkids on Wednesdays. But lately they’ve been losing track of conversations. Forgetting an appointment here and there. Reaching for names that used to come easily. 

They’re still themselves. They’re still living independently. And they’re in the window where today’s treatments work best. Doctors call it mild cognitive impairment (MCI) — and in clinical trials, patients caught at this earlier stage showed significantly greater slowing of cognitive decline. 

But fewer than 1 in 10 people with MCI are ever diagnosed during this window. Nine out of 10 slip right through. They see their doctor. They mention some concerns. And nothing happens. Once that window closes, we can’t get those years back. 

Here’s what the blood test changes. A simple blood draw in a doctor’s office can flag who needs a closer look — who might benefit from treatment, and who can make decisions about their own care while they’re still fully able to do so. Without it, the breakthroughs our advocates fought so hard to develop sit on a shelf just when they matter most. 

And the urgency only grows from here. A major clinical trial called TRAILBLAZER-3 is expected to report results this year. If positive, it would be the first treatment ever proven to slow the progression to Alzheimer’s dementia in people before symptoms even appear — treating the disease before it takes a single memory. But these people feel fine. They aren’t going to walk into a doctor’s office complaining. The only way to find them is screening, at scale, with a blood test. 

Detect early, treat early. We do this for cancer. We do this for heart disease. We do this for diabetes. It’s time we did it for Alzheimer’s — and the ASAP Act is how. 

Contact your members of Congress and tell them to support the ASAP Act.