University President Steven Knapp and a former U.S. representative co-wrote an op-ed in Roll Call on Wednesday to convince the federal government to increase research spending in developing medicines to combat illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease.

Knapp and former Rep. Rush Holt, D-NJ, who’s now the chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, focused on the importance of approving President Barack Obama’s plan to funnel more money into federal medical research and development to keep up with other countries’ research plans.

Obama proposed a nearly 9 percent increase for next fiscal year in funding research that the National Institutes of Health would conduct for Alzheimer’s disease. The increase is possible because Obama plans to forgo the spending caps that the Budget Control Act enacted in 2011.

The two also wrote about spending more on innovation in other areas, like sustainability.

“Of course, adequate federal funding is not the only ingredient of a productive scientific research effort, but it is a necessary ingredient,” they wrote. “Increased U.S. support for R&D would set the stage for economy-boosting innovations, especially in the areas of advanced manufacturing, clean-energy technology, climate-change research and neuroscience.”

Knapp and Holt, who is also the executive publisher of the Science family of journals, wrote that other countries are beginning to lead in medical research because of America’s plateaued spending on research and development. China created a plan in 2011 to invest twice as much as the U.S. in life science research over the next five years — and that amount is four times what the U.S. spends in that area as a percentage of gross domestic product.

About 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, and the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved any remedies for it in the past decade, Holt and Knapp wrote.

The op-ed cited the University’s steps toward lowering its carbon emissions. GW created a goal in 2010 to derive 10 percent of its energy from low-carbon technologies by 2040.

GW’s Executive Director of Sustainability Kathleen Merrigan announced at a Faculty Senate meeting in February that she wants the University to secure more federal grants from the government for research projects related to sustainability.