Prioritizing Women’s Brain Health Can Save Lives and Global Economies

By Maria Shriver, Joanne Pike and Hilary Evans-Newton

As thousands of the world’s leading Alzheimer’s researchers, clinicians, and policymakers convene this week in London for the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2026, we have an opportunity to change the course of history for women’s health by focusing on women’s brains.

For too long, women’s health has been compartmentalized into reproductive health, breast cancer, heart health and bone health. Missing from the conversation has been a focus on the organ that regulates every part of a woman’s body: the brain. That must end. Women’s health is brain health, and brain health is the core of women’s health.

Women make up nearly two-thirds of those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Women are also far more likely to provide the unpaid care that keeps families and care systems from collapse. Yet women’s brains remain largely under-studied, under-discussed, and underprioritized in research, risk reduction and care.

Our three organisations—Alzheimer’s Research UK, the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement at Cleveland Clinic are here to sound the alarm: if policymakers around the world do not put women’s brain health at the centre of any discussion of global health, we will suffer consequences on a scale that will impact every family, community and economy in the world. And it is women who will disproportionally continue to absorb the devastating costs.

The numbers should stop us cold. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that dementia costs the global economy US$1.3 today, a figure expected to rise to $2.8 trillion by 2030. In the UK alone, dementia is the leading cause of death for women and costs the country more than £42 billion a year—a figure set on course to more than double to roughly £90 billion by 2040.

The staggering costs related to dementia extend far beyond medical appointments and hospital care.

In the UK, it can cost up to £80,500 per person per year for the complex care required of a patient with dementia. In the U.S., unpaid caregiving is estimated to cost the economy $855.6 billion each year, including $261 billion in lost wages, early retirement and lower productivity. Roughly half of dementia’s total cost is attributed to informal care by family and friends, which means that half of the dementia economy rests on the unpaid labour of people who never applied for the job. Once again, those people are mostly women.

That is why our three organisations—leaders in the field of women and Alzheimer’s—are coming together to call for a fundamental shift. We are already investing tens of millions of dollars to put women at the centre of Alzheimer’s risk reduction, research and caregiver support. But funding alone is not enough. We need to change the way the world thinks about women’s health, dementia and the brain.

That means three things.

First, fund dementia research with urgency, seek to understand why women’s brains are different, and prioritize representative clinical trial recruitment. This means including a representative amount of women for each culture, country and community involved. Then report the results by sex.

Second, hold governments to their promises and make them commit to policy solutions. We must renew commitment to the WHO global dementia plan and ensure that every country adopts a plan of action by 2031.

Third, count unpaid care for what it is: work. It may be given with love, but it is still labour. The costs of care to individuals and in their lost wages and productivity are steep. We need real policy solutions so women aren’t forced to choose between caring for a loved one or bringing home income for their families.

The future of Alzheimer’s will be shaped by the choices we make now. If we invest in women’s brain health, we can change the trajectory of this disease for women around the world.

By failing to act in a coordinated, comprehensive way, we are paying for that failure many times over in health costs, in lost productivity, in exhausted families, and in diminished lives.

Brain health is health. Women’s brain health is women’s health. The world can no longer afford to ignore either.

AUTHORS: Maria Shriver is an award-winning journalist and founder of the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement at Cleveland Clinic; Hilary Evans-Newton CBE is the Chief Executive of Alzheimer’s UK; Joanne Pike, PhD, is president and chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Association in the U.S.