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Each person’s experience with Parkinson’s disease (PD) is unique. This makes it more difficult to run clinical trials and discover new and better treatments, because figuring out how to measure each person’s PD experience, so critical in clinical trials, has been a challenge for scientists to perfect. In 2008, Parkinson’s Foundation scientists began to wonder if the different care people with Parkinson's received impacted their PD experience.

Launched in 2009, the Parkinson's Foundation Parkinson’s Outcomes Project discovered that differences in care dramatically impact the lives of people with PD. Now concluded, this study found valuable insights to improve the lives of people with PD today and to speed trials to deliver new and better therapies tomorrow.

Among the largest clinical studies of Parkinson’s ever conducted, the Parkinson’s Outcomes Project spanned the patient experience of people with Parkinson’s. With more than 13,000 patients recruited through our Global Care Network's Centers of Excellence, the study included a dozen people with onset before 18 and more than 500 people who have lived with PD for more than 20 years (80% of whom live at home).

How do Center of Excellence care teams achieve the best results? Through this study, we tracked the components of the best care and learned about Parkinson’s in the process.

Study Findings

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