IC News

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) can take a physical and emotional toll not only on the individuals who have the disease but their families and caregivers as well.

What’s more, the lack of a fully comprehensive support program for caregivers in many communities can make providing quality care feel overwhelming and unattainable and pose a question for those in the health care field:

How can we create a program for family members and caregivers of individuals with Parkinson’s that integrates and navigates the various services and resources available to caregivers?

The challenge of creating such a program fell to Ithaca College students taking part in the Interprofessional Community Case Event, held annually by the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance (HSHP). Open to all juniors, seniors, and graduate students in HSHP, the event brings together students from a variety of majors across the school to collaborate on solutions for a fictional “case” based on a challenging real-world health-related problem. They then pitch to a panel of judges comprised of Ithaca College faculty, staff, and alumni as well as local health care experts.

Seniors Isabella Macro, Isabelle Magre, Kerry O'Brien, and Liam Whelan — representing three different majors within the school— won the competition with the proposal of an app called Navigate PD, which enables caregivers to take a holistic approach to meeting the needs of the Parkinson’s patients they care for.

Navigate PD contains six different “tabs” of information, ranging from in-home exercises to calendars and discussion boards.

“Going into the competition, we all had a general understanding of Parkinson’s, but it was mostly focused on patient care,” said Macro, a speech-language pathology and audiology major. “The caregiver-centered focus of this case was unique.”

As they began to brainstorm the content that would be on the app, each student drew on their personal experiences.

“I volunteered at Cayuga Health,” said Magre, a former physical therapy major now earning a health sciences degree. “They had a community calendar that highlighted local events. Knowing how important socialization is for individuals with Parkinson’s, I thought that would be critical to add.”

Knowing how important socialization is for individuals with Parkinson’s, I thought that would be critical to add.”

Whelan, who is majoring in exercise science after coming to Ithaca to study athletic training, had a family member who had Parkinson’s. “I knew from experience that the hardest part of their caregiver’s job is scheduling that person’s day, so we included a personal calendar as well.”

O’Brien, a former physical therapy major now studying health sciences, drew on her former clinical experience to create a tab for at-home exercises.

The group included a tab on the app that would share current research, drawing on their knowledge base to produce examples of potential studies that could be included.

“My speech pathology studies taught me about the importance of LSVT (Lee Silverman Voice Treatment) LOUD, a speech therapy treatment that helps patients increase the loudness of their voice,” said Macro. “So, I suggested we include some of the forthcoming research in that tab.”

The group also added a discussion forum tab and a resources tab that included information on helplines.

“We created this positive group environment, and whenever someone had an idea, we kept encouraging it,” O’Brien said. “It was refreshing to work with people who had an accumulation of different knowledge. It enabled us to create something that none of us could on our own.”