Exercise Strategies in Parkinson's Disease

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn about exercise and physical activity people with Parkinson's Disease. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1) learn about the physical activity and exercise behaviors of people with Parkinson's Disease over the course of a year and 2) compare 3 exercise guidance strategies aimed to impact exercise behavior: standard care, written exercise guidance from neurologist and/or physical therapy. During the course of the study: 1. Participants will use activity trackers and a mobile phone application to monitor their exercise participation. 2. At the same time, the research team will be working with the participant's medical teams at Northwestern Medicine and University of Chicago Medical Center to improve the way that they deliver exercise guidance using verbal instructions and encouragement, written exercise guidance, and/or physical therapy.

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 trial.show_full_description

Inclusion Criteria: * Have a neurologist confirmed diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease * Hoehn\&Yahr Stage 1-3 * Age 18-89 years old * Ambulatory * Written and verbal basic English proficiency adequate for survey completion * Have a smart phone * Willing to sync activity tracker with Datos health app at least every 3 days * Willing to accept Datos' Terms and Conditions Exclusion Criteria: * Diagnosis of dementia or mild cognitive impairment in medical record * Uses a rollator or rolling walker for mobility * Other comorbidities significantly limiting ability to participate in exercise \>12 weeks