HHS is replacing its usual single-year update with a full rewrite of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease, extending the federal framework to cover 2026 through 2035 instead of just the next twelve months. For family caregivers, that means the goals, funding priorities, and support programs the government ties its Alzheimer's work to are being rebuilt right now, not tweaked at the margins. The rewrite follows a public comment period, a watchdog review of the plan's track record, and an advisory council already mapping what the new document should say. Here's where that process stands and what to watch as it moves toward a finished plan.
Medical information disclaimer: This article is for general educational purposes only and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a physician or other qualified health professional about symptoms, medications, tests, or treatment decisions.
Table of Contents
- Why HHS Is Rewriting the Plan Instead of Updating It
- What HHS Asked the Public and Who Responded
- What the Advisory Council Has Been Doing
- What a Federal Watchdog Found Wrong With the Current Plan
- What to Watch for Next
Why HHS Is Rewriting the Plan Instead of Updating It
The National Plan has operated on an annual-update cycle for over a decade, but this cycle is different because of how long it now has to run. Congress's 2024 reauthorization of the National Alzheimer's Project Act extended the program and set the advisory council overseeing it to terminate on December 31, 2035, under 42 U.S.C. §11225.
That extended timeline is why HHS is building one plan to cover 2026 through 2035 rather than issuing another single-year revision, according to HHS/ASPE's approach document for the update. The plan being rewritten isn't starting from nothing. The current framework rests on six goals: preventing and effectively treating Alzheimer's disease, improving care quality, expanding family and caregiver supports, raising public awareness, improving data infrastructure, and promoting healthy aging, as laid out by HHS/ASPE's National Plans page. The 2026-2035 rewrite updates this structure rather than discarding it, so caregivers already familiar with these goal areas have a starting point for understanding what changes.
What HHS Asked the Public and Who Responded
On July 24, 2026, HHS opened a formal Request for Information under docket HHS-ASPE-2026-0298, published in the Federal Register. The request asked for public input on four areas: research, risk reduction, early detection and diagnosis, and caregiver and family support, with comments due by August 15, 2026.
LeadingAge, a national association representing aging-services providers, filed comments on the deadline day. The organization urged HHS to address underfunded dementia-specific care, inadequate workforce training, and the continued lack of widely available caregiver-support programs in the new plan, according to LeadingAge's submission. That filing gives a concrete sense of what provider and advocacy groups are pushing HHS to prioritize as it drafts the rewrite, particularly on the workforce and caregiver-support side that touches families most directly.
What the Advisory Council Has Been Doing
The plan isn't written by HHS staff alone. The NAPA Advisory Council, the federal body that has issued 285 recommendations to HHS and other agencies through 2024, swore in a new slate of members at its first 2026 meeting and began mapping the 2026-2035 update, according to HHS/ASPE's meeting materials.
At a later 2026 meeting, subcommittees presented recommendations that the full council voted on and adopted. This matters for caregivers because the council includes people outside government, and its adopted recommendations are one of the clearest signals of direction before the final plan text is released. Watching meeting materials as they're posted is a more direct way to track the plan's substance than waiting for the finished document.
What a Federal Watchdog Found Wrong With the Current Plan
The Government Accountability Office reviewed the National Alzheimer's Project and published its findings on June 29, 2026, in GAO-26-108498. The report credited the project with contributing to the first two FDA-approved treatments that slow early-stage Alzheimer's progression, a concrete result tied directly to the plan's research goal. But GAO also identified structural problems.
HHS's progress updates don't detail the implementation status of individual recommendations, which limits the advisory council's own ability to identify gaps in follow-through, per the same GAO report. GAO further found that HHS has set only long-term goals, such as reducing Alzheimer's risk broadly, without near-term, project-level goals that carry performance measures and timeframes. GAO made four recommendations to HHS to fix both problems and to communicate progress more clearly. Whether the 2026-2035 rewrite builds in the measurable, near-term goals GAO asked for is one of the clearest tests of whether this rewrite changes anything substantive for caregivers, rather than just extending the calendar.
What to Watch for Next
No final 2026-2035 National Plan text or new goal set has been published as of this writing. The comment period has closed, the advisory council has been voting on subcommittee recommendations, and HHS has GAO's four recommendations sitting alongside the RFI input it collected. Family caregivers who want to track this directly have two concrete things to watch: Checking the NAPA documents page periodically is the most direct way to see the finished plan before secondary coverage summarizes it, and it's also where any revised, measurable goals addressing GAO's findings would first appear.
- HHS/ASPE's release of the finalized 2026-2035 plan text, which will appear through its NAPA documentation page
- Advisory council meeting materials posted after the RFI comment period closed, which show which subcommittee recommendations the full council adopted before the plan is finalized
