Public Health - Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias - Information on Prevalence and Treatment
SB 748 expands Maryland’s public health outreach on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. It requires the Maryland Department of Health, working with the Department of Aging, the Virginia I. Jones Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Council, and the Greater Maryland Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, to add information about early detection, diagnosis, and treatment to existing outreach programs. The bill specifically directs the Department to educate health care providers and the public about FDA-approved treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, including information on treatment use and outcomes.
The bill also creates a new public website, maintained by the Department in collaboration with the State-designated health information exchange, that must publish statewide data on the prevalence and hospitalization rate of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Where possible, the data must be broken down by age, age at diagnosis, sex, race, ethnicity, county, co-occurrence of Down syndrome (trisomy-21), and type of dementia. The website must include the most recent five-year period of data ending September 30, 2025, and be updated annually beginning in 2027.
SB 748 amends Section 18-110 of the Health-General Article and adds new Section 18-111, expanding the Department of Health’s statutory duties regarding Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. It broadens existing outreach requirements to include FDA-approved treatment information and adds a new data-reporting and transparency mandate through a publicly accessible website. The bill affects the Department of Health, the Department of Aging, the state health information exchange, health care providers, patients, caregivers, and researchers who may use the published data.
The bill appears to have broad bipartisan support and a generally favorable reception. It passed the Senate unanimously and the House by a wide margin, indicating little formal opposition to the measure. The overall sentiment reflected in the voting history is that the bill is a public health and information-sharing measure aimed at improving awareness, diagnosis, and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
There is little evidence of major controversy in the available record, but the bill does make policy choices about what information the state should emphasize and publish. The most notable substantive additions are the requirement to include FDA-approved treatment information and the directive to disaggregate prevalence and hospitalization data by race, ethnicity, sex, county, and other factors, including biological sex-related treatment outcomes. Those provisions suggest an emphasis on equity and clinical usefulness, but no recorded committee debate or opposition identifies specific objections.