Spotlight on Parkinson's Research

April is Parkinsons Awareness Month. In Canada, 85% of those diagnosed with Parkinson's are over the age of 65. Parkinson Canada offers a range of strategies to support people living with Parkinson’s in managing everyday challenges and maintaining quality of life.

 

IALH Research Fellows Drs. Sharon Koehn, Denise Cloutier, and their collaborators recently published a critical interpretive synthesis identifying access barriers to Parkinson’s disease care among underserved populations. 

Dr. Denise Cloutier                                                                             Dr. Sharon Koehn

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a leading cause of neurological disability among older adults, with an age-standardized global prevalence in 2021 of 139 in 100,000 and projected to increase by 112% by 2050. People living with PD experience seven times worse health status than the general population. Access to diagnosis, care, and support is particularly challenged by intersecting social and healthcare system complexities.

Our research examines why people with Parkinson's disease face unequal access to specialized healthcare, and what drives those gaps. Through a rigorous synthesis of 96 studies, our team identified three interconnected mechanisms at work: where you live, how providers assess and treat you, and how overlapping identities—such as race, gender, or socioeconomic status—compound disadvantage. Understanding how these forces reinforce one another is essential to designing healthcare systems that work for everyone. 

We are drawn to this work because health equity isn't just an abstract principle - it's about real people navigating an incredibly complex disease while also navigating systems that weren't designed with them in mind. Understanding why inequitable access persists, rather than simply documenting that it exists, feels like the most actionable contribution we can make.” – Dr. Sharon Koehn, Adjunct Professor, Gerontology, SFU

IALH Research Fellows Mentor UVic Self-Stabilising Spoon Project

As part of their final-year capstone project, a team of UVic biomedical engineering students, Sarah Keegan, Amy Symes, and Mitchell Martin, mentored by Drs. David Kennedy and Stephanie Willerth, designed a self-stabilising spoon to help people with Parkinson's disease eat more independently. The prototype is the first of its kind to detect and intervene in upper-limb freezing, a common but unaddressed symptom. The team used tactile cues built directly into the spoon instead of relying on a separate wearable to provide sensory input to prevent spilling. While accelerometer-based tremor monitoring is well-established, this non-wearable approach to upper limb freezing is a novel contribution to assistive technology. Sarah grew up watching her grandfather struggle with daily tasks because of Parkinson's, and that personal connection shaped the project.

Co-supervisor Dr. David Kennedy's ongoing collaboration with Parkinson Wellness Projects brought real-world perspective and direct community connections to the work. The team was driven by a shared goal: to give people with Parkinson's back a little more independence and dignity at the dinner table.