William (Bill) is Professor of Neurology & Neuroscience and the inaugural Director of the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. His academic career includes a medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis followed by internship and fellowships at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and Columbia University in New York. He is a leader in the study of Parkinson’s disease and dystonia. For almost two decades, the team he leads has performed groundbreaking research focused on the molecular basis of dystonia and the mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease. Bill is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and his work has been recognized with the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation’s Fahn Award, the Michael J. Fox Foundation Bachmann-Strauss Prize for Excellence in Dystonia Research, and the Harold and Golden Lamport Award for excellence in clinical science research from Columbia University.

As you know, and like Parkinson’s itself, education and services for people with PD are not one-size-fits-all. Hopefully, you have access to resources in your community similar to what Aaron describes in this episode. If you don’t know where to find them, call our toll-free Helpline at 1-800-4PD-INFO (473-4636). Our PD Information Specialists can help you locate health care providers, wellness classes, and more

Aaron Daley, MA, is the clinic and research coordinator for the University of California, San Francisco (SF) Parkinson's Disease (PD) center. He runs the day-to-day operations of the center, including clinical research trials, PD outreach and education in the Bay Area, and follow-up clinical care in the UCSF Movement Disorder department. Given his location in the SF Bay Area—one of most diverse populations in the world — he strives to collect, create, and transmit culturally appropriate information on PD. In the last 10 years, he has worked on a variety of National Institutes of Health- and Department of Defense-funded research projects: investigating issues related to mental health screening of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, blood ratios in massively transfused trauma patients, and the effects of cognitive behavioral interventions with sleep disorders and depression. He is interested in the ways that medicine and mental health intersect, as well as investigating ways that our society can improve the services and quality of life of the mentally ill. He graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1999, and a Master’s degree in Psychology, with an emphasis in research, from San Francisco State University in 2008.

Dr. Bega is a fellowship trained, board-certified, movement disorders neurologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He has completed clinical training in neurology at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Dr. Bega has expertise in the care and management of patients with a variety of movement disorders including Parkinson’s disease, and is the director of the Northwestern Huntington’s disease and Wilson’s disease clinics. He has completed master’s level training in clinical investigations through the Northwestern Graduate School and is involved in several industry sponsored trials. His primary area of interest is the study of alternative and non-pharmacologic interventions in movement disorders and their impact on quality of life.

Deputy Chief Scientific Officer, Van Andel Institute, Director, Center for Parkinson’s Disease, Grand Rapids, MI, USA

Patrik Brundin earned his PhD in 1988 and MD in 1992, both from Lund University, Sweden, and joined the Van Andel Institute in 2012. He is highly cited in neuroscience with more than 400 publications on Parkinson’s disease and related topics. His research focuses on pathogenic mechanisms of Parkinson’s and development of therapies that slow or stop disease progression or that repair damaged brain circuits. He is a member of the World Parkinson Coalition Board of Directors and The Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research Executive Scientific Advisory Board. He also serves as co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease and chair of the Linked Clinical Trials scientific committee.

Roger Barker, BA, MBBS, MRCP, PhD is the Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and Consultant Neurologist at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital Cambridge. He is a PI in the MRC-Wellcome Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge and Director of the MRC funded UKRMP Stem and Engineered cell hub.

His research seeks to better define the clinical heterogeneity of two common neurodegenerative disorders of the CNS- namely Parkinson’s (PD) and Huntington’s disease (HD). This has helped him define the best way by which to take new therapies into the clinic including novel experimental therapeutics such as cell and gene therapies.

Heather Cianci, PT, MS, GCS is the Outpatient Neurological Team Leader and founding therapist of the Dan Aaron Parkinson’s Rehabilitation Center, Penn Therapy & Fitness at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, PA – part of the University of Pennsylvania. Heather received her Bachelor’s in Physical Therapy from the University of Scranton in Scranton, PA and her Master’s in Gerontology from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She has been a physical therapist since 1994 and received her board certification in geriatrics in 1999 from the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties. Heather is an LSVT® BIG certified clinician, a PWR! certified clinician, a graduate of the Rock Steady Boxing program for Parkinson’s and is certified in Music and Memory®. She serves as an LSVT® BIG Faculty Instructor for LSVT Global, Inc., and Co-coordinator and PT Faculty for the Parkinson’s Foundation’s (PF) Allied Team Training Program. Heather has authored book chapters on rehabilitative strategies for PD, and Frontotemporal Degeneration. She also is the author of the PF educational manual “Fitness Counts.” Heather has lectured for various state Physical Therapy Associations, the former Parkinson Disease Foundation, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, national continuing education companies, and Philadelphia-area conferences and support groups. Her research includes movement strategies for bed mobility, falls, freezing of gait, and functional movement disorders. She teaches about rehabilitation and PD at Thomas Jefferson University’s (Philadelphia, PA) and Neumann University’s (Aston, PA) departments of PT. Heather is a former Board member of CurePSP® and team member of the COPE program (Comprehensive Outpatient Atypical Parkinsonism Evaluation) at Pennsylvania Hospital’s Parkinson’s Disease & Movement Disorder Center.

Christine Hunter, RN, BSN is a registered nurse and has worked in ICU and CCU, charge nurse on the step-down cardiac unit, and in Quality Management for the Memorial Hospital System. She joined Baylor College of Medicine Parkinson Disease Center and Movement Disorders Clinic (PDCMDC) in 1996. She has been an active member of the Parkinson Study Group (PSG) as well as Huntington Study Group (HSG) during this time and has served in several different capacities within these groups, such as the Coordinator representative on the Executive committee, serves on the steering committee for an HD trial, served on the credentialing committee, and budget committee. She has extensive experience in Clinical Trials for all Movement Disorders. She has been the Parkinson Foundation Center Coordinator at Baylor College of Medicine since 1996 and an active member of the Task Force for the PF Mentoring and Networking Program.

Hubert H. Fernandez, MD, is Professor of Medicine (Neurology) at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University and the Head of Movement Disorders under the Center for Neurological Restoration at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

Dr Fernandez received both his BS in Biology and MD degree in the Philippines. He completed his internship in internal medicine at University of Pennsylvania/Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; his residency in neurology at Boston University Medical Center in Massachusetts; and his fellowship in movement disorders at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Dr. Fernandez is an internationally recognized expert in movement disorders who has been voted one of the Best Doctors in America by his peers. After completing his medical training, he joined the faculty of Brown University School of Medicine as Assistant Professor of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and served as Associate Director of the Movement Disorders Unit and Neurological Director of its Functional Neurosurgical Program. In 2003, Dr Fernandez relocated to the University of Florida, where he eventually became Director of the Clinical Research Unit for Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders, Vice Chair of Academic Affairs, and Professor of Neurology prior to joining Cleveland Clinic. An active and productive researcher, he has initiated or participated in over 50 clinical trials and has published his findings in well over 300 articles and abstracts on Parkinson’s disease, cervical dystonia, blepharospasm, and other movement disorders. He has nearly 40 published book chapters and books to his credit, and has served on the editorial board of Movement Disorders and is currently an editorial board member of the American Journal of Clinical Neurology, European Neurological Journal, and Clinical Neuropharmacology.

Dr Fernandez is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, and a member of the American Neurological Association. He is currently elected as a Councilor for the AAN Movement Disorders Section, Executive Committee Member of the Parkinson Study Group and Dystonia Study Group; and is also an Executive Board Member of the World Neurology Foundation. He has served as President of the Florida Society of Neurology, and is the current Co-Medical Editor of the Movement Disorders Society Web site. Recently, he has been elected the Co-Chair of the Parkinson Study Group for a 6 year term.

Professor Bas Bloem is a consultant neurologist at the Department of Neurology, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He received his medical degree, with honours, at Leiden University Medical Centre in 1993 and obtained his PhD degree in 1994. He trained as a neurologist between 1994 and 2000, also at Leiden University Medical Centre. He received additional training as a movement disorders specialist during fellowships at The Parkinson's Institute, Sunnyvale, California, and at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London. In September 2008, he was appointed professor of neurology, with movement disorders as special area of interest.

Professor Bloem is on the editorial board for several national and international journals and has published over 750 publications, including more than 640 peer-reviewed international papers. This includes a series of large clinical trials, all of which were published in high-end scientific journals. He has also supervised 48 successfully completed PhD dissertations. His H-index is 74 (Publons) / 86 (Research Gate) / 97 (Google Scholar).

Professor Bloem is past president of the International Society for Gait and Postural Research. He recently became an Officer (secretary-elect) for the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. From 2009 until September 2017, he was part of the board of ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development). In 2011, he was elected the National Healthcare Hero by the Dutch Ministry of Health and Citizen of the Year for the city of Nijmegen in 2012. Since 2017, he has served on the Executive Scientific Advisory Board of The Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. In 2018, he was elected as member of the “Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen” (the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities), the oldest scientific society in the Netherlands. In 2018, he won the Tom Isaacs award as a recognition of his longstanding achievements in the field of Parkinson’s disease.

Also in 2018, he was elected as member of the Academia Europaea. In 2019, he was elected as Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In 2020, he was elected as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Also in 2020, he became co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease.

In 2002, Professor Bloem founded and became director of the Radboudumc Centre of Expertise for Parkinson & Movement Disorders, which was recognised from 2005 onwards as a centre of excellence for Parkinson’s disease. Together with Dr Marten Munneke, he also developed ParkinsonNet, an innovative healthcare concept that now consists of 70 professional networks for Parkinson’s disease patients, covering all of The Netherlands (www.parkinsonnet.nl).

Because of the evidence-based quality improvement and significant cost reduction, ParkinsonNet has received multiple awards, including the Best Pearl for Healthcare Innovation prize in 2011. In 2015, ParkinsonNet was awarded with the Value-Based Health Care Prize.

Professor Bloem has two main research interests: cerebral compensatory mechanisms, especially in the field of gait and balance; and healthcare innovation, aiming to develop and scientifically evaluate patient-centred collaborative care. He also values the publication of remarkable observations in single patients.