Last June at the 5th World Parkinson Congress  in Kyoto, we presented the abstract “Motor performance and quality of life in a community exercise program for Parkinson’s disease.” Our poster highlighted the physical wellness and quality of life outcomes that we’re seeing with our community-based, holistic approach to helping people with Parkinson’s disease feel better every day.

The findings we presented in Kyoto have recently been published in the August 2020 issue of Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation, a peer-reviewed journal.  The article, entitled “Motor Performance and Quality of Life in a Community Exercise Program for Parkinson Disease” (Stiles, E., Jaffe, K., Schwartz, C., Rossi, B., Riley, D.), describes our investigation into the effects of a comprehensive community program composed of exercise, mindfulness practice, and education on motor function and quality of life in individuals with Parkinson disease (PD). Thirty-six participants completed physical and quality-of-life assessments independently at baseline and 12 months. Physical assessments showed stability or improvement in functional mobility, integrated strength, and walking ability over the 1-year interval. PDQ-39 measures showed improvement in 6 of 8 indices: mobility, activities of daily living, emotional well-being, stigma reduction, social support, and bodily discomfort. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of exercise, mindfulness, and education in community and group settings.

Since research in a community-based group setting offers a wealth of opportunities for additional studies, we look at this article as the first of many. As we move forward, we expect the strength of our research design to improve with greater numbers of subjects and by incorporating data on attendance frequency and analysis of the effects of different scheduled activities. For example, we would like to examine what combinations of classes (eg, physical classes only vs. a combination of physical and expressive classes such as singing or dance) produce the strongest results. With larger numbers of participants, we may be able to focus on identifying subgroups of participants who benefit from specific activities. Finally, we are interested in developing a research design that incorporates random selection into the experimental and control groups. We expect the data we generate will drive innovation and continuous improvement in our program delivery and we hope it can inform other community programs around the world.

Our findings support previous research regarding the power of exercise and other support activities. Complementing our research findings are the stories from our clients and their families who, every day with InMotion’s support, are learning to live positively and constructively with their disease.  Our community provides a nurturing, welcoming environment through which our clients become stronger physically and emotionally. As our research program grows, we hope our results will continue to support our efforts to provide our clients with the tools they need to live well with PD. We expect to be able to share more data supporting our community-based exercise programs at the 6th World Parkinson Congress.

Ben Rossi is the Chief Program Officer, Founding Member of InMotion and Cathe Schwartz is the Chief Executive Officer of InMotion. InMotion is a nonprofit organization based in Cleveland, Ohio, USA that offers a wide range of exercise, healing arts, education and support programs at no cost to the Parkinson’s community.

This research was first shared as an abstract at the WPC 2019 in Kyoto. WPC is pleased to support abstract authors by sharing their ongoing work. Digital files of WPC abstract books can be downloaded from the past three Congresses HERE.

Ideas and opinions expressed in this post reflect that of the author(s) solely. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the World Parkinson Coalition®