Our Goal

The Goal of "IMPROVE" is to study large numbers of people with Parkinson's Disease across the Country. Our research is focused on people who have not been included often in previous PD research:

There is a “PD belt” in the U.S.

Our earlier research (published in the journal Neuroepidemiology, 2010) suggests that there is a higher rate of Parkinson Disease in certain parts of the country:

The areas in red have the highest rates of PD among older adults.  We want to find out what types of pollution exposure in these areas increase the risk of Parkinson Disease, and whether living in a red or orange area means your disease progresses faster.

PD is not the same for everyone.

Other research (published in the journal Neurology in 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015) by Dr. Willis has suggested that women, African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics are much less likely to be diagnosed with PD, and that they may have milder or different forms of the disease. We want to find out how PD is different in these groups to improve treatment.

People with PD receive lower quality of care than other adults with Medicare.  

Finally, we have recently discovered that many people with PD do not receive care from a neurologist or movement disorders specialist.  Also, people with PD often don’t get regular preventative care (like cancer screenings or flu shots), even though these are paid for by Medicare.  This seems to lead to increased hospitalizations and illnesses that can be prevented! We would like to understand how having PD affects the quality of medical care you receive, examine PD treatment experiences across different types of physicians. We will use this data to understand which treatment combinations (medications, therapy, and specialist care) work best, especially for women, non- whites, and later in the disease.

Dr. Allison Willis

A board certified neurologist and fellowship-trained movement disorders/Parkinson's Disease, Dr. Willis is internationally known for her research on health care outcomes and disparities in PD. She is on faculty in the departments of Neurology, Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

She has active grants from the NIH, PCORI and private foundations. The impact of her research was recently recognized with an award from the American Academy of Neurology, and the findings from her work have been presented to the U.S. Congress as evidence of the need for improved care and increased NIH funding for PD research.