Students aim to boost diversity in Parkinson’s exercise providers
University of Michigan-Flint doctorate students awarded $50,000 grant
Two University of Michigan-Flint doctorate students received a $50,000 grant to support diversity among exercise providers offering care to people with Parkinson’s disease.
The grant, from The Michigan Health Equity Challenge, will help the pair’s Move to Represent initiative train 10 physical and occupational therapists of color to implement an exercise and physical therapy program called PWR!Moves at the university’s Health Equity, Action Research, and Teaching (HEART) health clinic.
Move to Represent, developed by physical therapy doctoral students Nia Ahart and Zoey Humes, aims to improve patients’ trust and participation in exercise programs by providing them with access to providers representative of their communities. The team will use the funding to partner with the Michigan Parkinson Foundation to send students through the foundation’s Train the Trainer program.
“This grant is a game changer for people with Parkinson’s in communities of color,” Kristin Rossi, CEO of the Michigan Parkinson Foundation, said in a university news story. “We know that representation matters in effective community outreach, and we … can help bring greater attention to the importance of movement-based activities in the greater Flint Parkinson’s community and beyond.”
Motor symptoms are a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease, and include abnormally slowed movements, tremors, muscle rigidity, and difficulties with balance and walking. The Basic 4 PWR!Moves program is designed to address common movement and functional challenges faced by people with Parkinson’s. Its goal is to ease symptoms and enhance overall physical function. Exercises are tailored to each individual’s needs, gradually increasing in physical and cognitive difficulty to match patients’ abilities and progression.
Parkinson’s and exercise
The program can be used in physical and exercise therapy settings or group classes, or incorporated into patients’ daily routines, including activities of daily living, sports, or recreational activities.
The students’ project will implement the program at HEART, a free health clinic that serves people in Flint and Genesee counties without health insurance or with insufficient insurance coverage. It also provides practical training for UM-Flint students by promoting collaborative practice and addressing care inequities, according to the university.
“A key component of HEART programming is our face-to-face exercise class where we serve anywhere between 10 and 12 participants with Parkinson’s disease each week,” said Amy Yorke, PhD, professor of physical therapy at UM-Flint. “While our exercise programming is located in the city of Flint, we have more work to do with recruiting participation from people of color.”
The grant program aims to encourage graduate students to partner with community organizations to develop community-based solutions addressing identified health equity issues, from health itself, inequalities in access to care, or social determinants of health (non-medical factors that may influence health outcomes). Such factors include education, housing, transportation, environment, economic stability, and social support.
“Representation matters,” Yorke said. “Imagine receiving health care and never coming across anyone who looks like you. This happens consistently to people of color. A broader representation of providers improves the care and outcomes of persons of color.”
Humes said she hopes to use her experience at UM-Flint to open a community center serving individuals with disabilities in her community in Ypsilanti, Mich. “We eventually want to be able to take what we have learned and go into our communities throughout Michigan and hold classes there as well,” she said.
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