Exercise Strategies in Parkinson's Disease

The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how people with Parkinson's disease (PD) manage their physical activity and exercise participation with different levels of support from their communities and clinicians. We will evaluate exercise and physical activity every 3 months in a cohort of people with PD from two medical centers in the Chicagoland area: Northwestern Medicine and University of Chicago Medical Center.

During this study, we will evaluate differences in 12-month physical activity trajectories between groups enrolled during each of three conditions: (1A) standard care (condition 1, year 1), (1B) written exercise guidance (condition 2, year 2), and (1C) Consultative PT (condition 3, year 3). People with PD will be enrolled each year into an activity and exercise tracking study. Participants will be tracked using a remote therapeutic monitoring platform (Datos) and commercial grade activity trackers. Research-grade actigraphy and patient reported outcome measures will be monitored every 3 months for the first year.

All participants will be enrolled in an exercise and physical activity tracking study where they can use a remote therapeutic monitoring platform (Datos Health) to share their exercise and physical activity data with their medical and rehabilitation teams at NM and UCMC. The platform allows for synchronization of patients' activity data from their fitness tracker or smartwatch to the secure cloud-based platform. The platform can summarize steps per day, activity intensity, minutes of moderate-vigorous physical activity per day based on target heart rate zones (including an ability for physical therapists to customize the target heart rate zone).

At the 2 sites of care (Northwestern Medicine and University of Chicago), participants will be recruited based on contacting consecutive patients who meet the inclusion criteria based on scheduling and EMR screening prior to their visit with their neurologists. Contacting consecutive patients will ensure greater potential equity of enrolling participants rather than only patients engaged in support groups and exercise classes. However, after 3 months of recruitment, we will conduct a preliminary analysis of the numbers, recruitment rates, and characteristics (age, sex, race, ethnicity, disease duration, education) of the enrolling participants compared to the demographics of each clinic as a whole. We will then determine if we should use targeted recruitment strategies to increase reach to specific groups or recruitment rates by doing one or more of the following: (1) sending measures through MyChart to potentially eligible patients targeting or oversampling for higher socioeconomic, race, or ethnicity diversity or (2) reaching out to local community exercise classes or support groups using emails to community advocates and flyers to increase sample size more rapidly.

Consecutive patients meeting the eligibility criteria will be approached by a site study team member. The first contact may occur before or during a medical (physician, physician assistant, nurse practitioner) visit. The electronic health record system will be used to screen participants for eligibility in the few weeks before their visit through an institutional review board-approved electronic data warehouse data waiver. Attempts will be made to contact potential participants before their appointments, with a research coordinator attempting contact at their visit if there is no response to early contacts. If time is limited during the patient's session, we will use patient portal communication and/or phone calls after their visits depending on the preferences of each site (which will be determined during the pre-implementation barrier assessment).

Screening for eligibility will occur via a combination of data available in the EMR for existing patients and a quick screening questionnaire that can be done in person or over the phone. After identifying that the participant is interested and satisfies the inclusion criteria for the study, they will be sent an e-consent. Once consent is obtained, they will work with the study team to set a time for the baseline assessment period which will include ensuring the participant has their own -wrist-worn activity tracker and is able to get commercial grade activity tracker from the research team. At baseline and every 3-months throughout the 12-month (baseline, 3-months, 6-months, 9-months, 12-months) study, participants will complete online survey assessments including demographic questionnaires, habits and perceptions of physical activity and exercise, and healthcare and exercise resource utilization. Participants will, also, wear a research-grade physical activity monitor on a belt clip around their waist for 7-consecutive days at baseline, 3-, 6-, 9-, 12-months. In addition to research-grade physical activity monitoring, participants will be asked to asked to a personal commercially available activity tracker daily which will be synced to the Datos Health app.