Objective: The Supportive Care Clinic and Lifestyle Improvement Fitness (LIFT) program provides multidisciplinary care and online educational resources for our parkinsonian patients. Demographics of patients and caregivers, topics most covered, and feedback from our year-long virtual educational classes will be reviewed.

Background: Patients with parkinsonism experience a broad spectrum of motor and non-motor symptoms, requiring various resources to support complex issues. This program intended to leverage existing resources to more effectively meet the needs of patients and caregivers. Identifying social drivers of health in this population may mitigate barriers to care.

Method: Retrospective chart review of tertiary care movement center’s LIFT program in NYC from 12/7/23 to 2/28/25 was performed.  Those requiring longer time and resources were referred to LIFT.  Descriptive statistics were used for demographics.  Correlational statistics and multinomial logistic regression across cases explored which wellness areas were important what were potential barriers. Online surveys were distributed after the educational sessions to assess quality of content.

Results: 115 patients were in our LIFT program (50% female; 70% Caucasian; mean age 76; mean years since diagnosis 6 (SD5.92)). Seventy percent of patients arrived with at least one caregiver (spouse (39%) or child (16%). Fifteen percent of patients were non-English-speaking Asian or Hispanic, typically accompanied by multiple family members. Memory concerns, depression, and social isolation were common across all participants; social drivers of health such as transportation and language barriers limited access for some. From 12/2024 to 2/2025, 12 virtual educational sessions were offered. The top three highest attended programs focused on cognition. While content was rated as practical, many still felt neutral about managing their condition and wanted more programming on managing memory loss.

Conclusion: Our program shows an effective means of integrating multidisciplinary care and educational resources into our clinical program.  The findings highlight the need for tailored support, especially for non-English-speaking patients facing social barriers. Based on feedback of virtual educational classes, future programs focusing on practical strategies for managing memory loss will be needed.

References: Subramanian I, Perepezko K, Stone B, Ray Chaudhuri K, Pontone GM. Wellness in Parkinson’s disease: a framework for management using a holistic culturally sensitive approach. Neurology. 2023;19(1):8-13. doi:10.17925/USN.2023.19.1.8.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/retrospective-analysis-of-our-supportive-care-clinic-and-lifestyle-improvement-fitness-program/