Alzheimer's becomes a presidential campaign issue 

DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TOM STEYER TALKS WITH AN ALZHEIMER'S ADVOCATE (CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES)

The Iowa State Fair is a rite of passage for presidential candidates — they eat weird fried food, kiss babies, and answer question after question about their vision for America. But this year the candidates got a different sort of question, over and over again: What’s your plan to fight Alzheimer's?

Volunteers with the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement, the advocacy arm of the Alzheimer's Association, swarmed the state fair this weekend and posed that question to every Democratic presidential candidate at the fair, with the exception for Marianne Williamson, according to John Funderburk, the group’s senior advocacy director. 

This isn’t the first time AIM and their purple-shirt sporting volunteers have interrogated presidential candidates: The barnstorm is part of a larger plan to make ending Alzheimer’s a 2020 campaign issue. AIM’s volunteers already stormed events in South Carolina and New Hampshire, too, and their presence has become so ubiquitous that Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel has taken to calling them “the omnipresent Alzheimer’s activists.”

“We knew that we had to elevate the conversation, and we had to do it fast,” Funderburk, told STAT when asked why AIM embarked on this campaign. “The crisis demands it.” 

And it seems the idea is working: More than one candidate brought up Alzheimer’s in their stump speeches at this weekend’s fair, according to Funderburk. Several candidates, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Beto O’Rourke, have also released plans that touch on ending Alzheimer’s. And the momentum is likely to keep going, at least if Klobuchar gets her way ... She needled an ABC News reporter at this weekend's fair to include a question on Alzheimer’s at the next presidential debate, according to Funderburk.