Parkinson's Foundation

We are leaders in ensuring expert Parkinson’s disease (PD) care; educating and empowering the Parkinson’s community; and driving the understanding of Parkinson’s through research. As a national organization with a local presence and impact, we bring help and hope to the estimated one million individuals in the United States, 10 million worldwide, who are living with Parkinson’s.

Ensuring Better Care for Everyone

• We set standards for expert Parkinson’s care through our global network of 42 Centers of Excellence.
• We improve the quality of life for people with PD by tracking the care that they receive at our centers. Nearly 10,000 patients are enrolled in our Parkinson’s Outcomes Project, the largest clinical study of PD. According to our study, regular Parkinson’s treatment from a neurologist could save thousands of lives each year.
• We are working to close the gap in Parkinson’s professional training by educating nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech language therapists and social workers so they can provide better care.

Educating and Empowering the Parkinson’s Community

• We educate and empower people with PD through our national network of staff and volunteers. We were the first organization to form a Parkinson’s advisory council and the first to train people with PD to partner with scientists on research.
• We help people live well with PD by providing free resources including: educational books, webinars, podcasts, a life-saving hospitalization kit, and our toll-free Helpline, staffed by Parkinson’s specialists who answer nearly 30,000 calls annually.
• We bring local communities together through Moving Day®, A Walk for Parkinson’s, a national grassroots event that has raised $14 million to support Parkinson’s research and local wellness programs across the country.

Understanding Parkinson’s through Research

• We invest more than $10 million annually in promising scientists who are on a mission to understand the basic mechanisms of Parkinson’s that are critical to developing new treatments and medications.
• We recruit the most talented minds in Parkinson’s research by supporting early career scientists in neurology who might choose other fields of study.
• We identify and address the unmet needs of people with PD by driving cutting-edge research on a wide range of patient-driven topics.

Eighty cents of every donation dollar received is spent on mission-related programs. Thanks to the support of our network and to donors like you, we are making life better for people with Parkinson’s today.