At CSUN, a Place for Hope
Anyone who’s been there can appreciate actress Shelley Fabares’ heartfelt salute to the new Alzheimer’s Assn. Center at Cal State Northridge.
Fabares lost her mother eight years ago to the disease and is now the national Alzheimer’s Assn. spokeswoman.
“To have a place like this to provide support means more than you can possibly understand,” she told those assembled to celebrate the center’s opening late last month. “I believe this [center] is the work of angels.”
All around her heads nodded: They had been there; they could understand. Former Pasadena Mayor Katie Nack, whose husband is in the latter stages of the disease, shared her story with the group, as did Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has a close relative struggling with symptoms. This is a disease, after all, that makes no special arrangements for movie stars or political leaders--as Maureen Reagan, an Alzheimer’s activist since her father announced six years ago that he had the disease, takes pains to remind us.
The disease that has robbed former President Ronald Reagan, now 89, of his memories is a progressive, degenerative condition of the brain, the most common form of dementia. According to the Alzheimer’s Assn., it affects at least 4 million Americans directly--a number regional director Rachelle Bloch thinks is overly conservative. The association points out that for each person with the illness, one to three family members generally face the daily challenge of providing care and support.
The number of people with the disease is expected to more than triple in the next 50 years, to 14 million. By 2025, California alone is likely to have more than 800,000 people with Alzheimer’s.
The CSUN center is the Los Angeles chapter’s first regional office and will serve the San Fernando Valley and the northern reaches of Los Angeles County, including the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys and parts of Simi Valley.
The center, housed in CSUN’s Monterey Hall, runs support groups for caregivers, a resource library and referrals to other resources. The center plans to partner with other community organizations to provide education and training for both professionals and family caregivers.
By partnering with CSUN, the center will be able to use graduate students as interns to help develop and provide services to the community--and hands-on training for the students themselves.
CSUN’s location in the heart of the Valley is accessible in the broadest sense. Just as the campus serves a diverse population of students, the center is in a position to reach out to the city’s ethnically diverse communities and to provide services such as Spanish-language support groups.
“Those days are gone where universities don’t address the concerns of the communities where they are located,” Stephen Sinclair, chairman of CSUN’s Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences, told center celebrants at the grand opening. In this case, the university is on the side not just of the community but also of the angels.
*
To Take Action: For more information about the Alzheimer’s Assn. Center or Alzheimer’s disease or to volunteer, contact the center at (818) 677-4404. The center is located in Suite 201 of Monterrey Hall at the corner of Nordhoff Street and Zelzah Avenue; its mailing address is 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, 91330-8279. You can also find information on the Los Angeles Alzheimer’s Assn. Web site (https://www.alzla.org).
