Kate Coates

Working to Give Back

Thank you so much to those who have already taken a moment to donate to this cause! 

I figured I’d take a moment to expand a bit on my personal journey from my experiences with my grandmother’s struggles with vascular dementia to this wonderful organization focused on Alzheimer’s Disease more specifically…

Two weeks before I began college, my grandmother found her everlasting peace. Inspired by her, I created a stop motion short for my freshman art scholarship end-of-semester project, illustrating the complex emotions of living with the ghost of a life that was slowly lost to this disease. 

Years later, when I arrived at the big question of what to focus my graduate thesis efforts on during graduate school, the experiences of my grandmother quickly came to mind. I decided to dive into the most prolific form of dementia, Alzheimer's disease, which affects 6.7 million+ Americans aged 65 and older. Given that the Alzheimer's population will increasingly have a technical familiarity over time, I decided to focus my efforts on young-onset dementia patients who would have similar technical faculties as the future Alzheimer's population at large. 

My hope was that by creating an inexpensive, easily accessible mobile application tailored to young-onset dementia needs, these more technically minded individuals can avoid feeling like a misunderstood pariah and instead feel a sense of positivity and independence that they are so fervently trying to maintain for as long as possible. Researching, designing, and testing this application was a huge highlight in my life. I learned so much about and through this community and hope that my research was able to give back to the community at large. 

I continue to strive to give back to this community as much as I can. I would be extremely honored if you would sponsor me in this run. This community would be extremely blessed by anything you have to give. 

A Little Personal History

The fight to end Alzheimer's has been something that has been near and dear to my heart for quite some time. Unbeknownst to me at the time, upon completing 5th grade I joined the ranks of the ~2.7 million American families who are impacted by vascular dementia. It was just a matter of time that the increasingly worrying symptoms of my grandmother (all of which were fervently deemed inconsequential by her at the time) were given the official label. The 8 years that were to follow were some of the most trying times within my family. Though there were many trials and tribulations, I choose to instead focus on the blessings: 

1.  I was able to know (though, in full form much more briefly than I would have liked) the extremely generous, hardworking, and loving woman that was Evelyn Sanders. 

2.  I was able to be a witness to the profound strength (and at times immense grief) of my grandmother--a woman who single-handedly carried the weight of her family of six on her shoulders for many years after losing her husband far too early to cancer-- as she slipped in and out of situational understanding. Her strength in the face of such an immense, incurable obstacle has left an everlasting imprint on my heart. 

3.  I am the daughter of what may be the most kind, selfless, and loving woman in the world, who threw herself into being at her mother's side through thick-and-thin. She was a caretaking superstar in the midst of some pretty extreme adversity and while it was extremely emotionally taxing, she never gave up. I'm so incredibly proud of her. She's an inspiration. 

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This year I am a part of the "Alzheimer's Association Run to Remember" team as we run the Philadelphia Half Marathon on November 22, 2025. I will run for my grandmother, Evelyn, and all of those who have or are actively struggling with the various roller-coaster-like stages of mental loss. I will run for my mom, Gail, and all of the caretakers who have been the forces of love and resilience behind a curtain too few people see behind. I will run for my kids in the hope that they will see an end to this disease in their lifetime and never have to experience a loved one suffering from it.

I would be extremely honored if you would sponsor me in this run. This community would be extremely blessed by anything you have to give.