EMPOWER PD - Feasibility of an Interdisciplinary Clinic for People With Parkinson's Disease
Phase: NA
Conditions: Parkinson Disease
Sponsor: University of Rhode Island

Date: 3/2/2023 
 
Title of Study: EMPOWER PD 
 
Identifier: NCT05640167 
 
Study Protocol 
Participants were consented and enrolled at the first clinic appointment and received a 
comprehensive assessment by each member of an interdisciplinary team, including 
physical therapy, speech therapy, nutrition, and pharmacy and completed demographic 
and baseline characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity, race, years living with PD and 
stage of disease, education and cognitive status as measured by the Montreal Cognitive 
Assessment (MoCA). Participants returned the following week for a half day educational 
symposium which was a group format and included a session from each of the disciplines 
on topics such as exercise, nutrition, communication, socialization, and medication 
management. The final clinic session was a one hour 1:1 meeting with individualized 
recommendations provided and goals set. A participant-identified caregiver was allowed 
to accompany the participant throughout the assessment and educational process 
whenever possible, but no information was collected from them.  
 
Statistical Analysis 
Descriptive data are presented as means (SD). Data was assessed for normality using 
skewness (<3) and kurtosis (<10). All data were normally distributed; therefore, no 
transformations were necessary prior to analysis. Of the 3 intervention sessions, there 
were missing data files for the due to cognitive impairment of one participant and therefore 
that participants data is only included in completed surveys and self-report measures. 
 
Survey data was analyzed from the collected responses from participants regarding their 
agreement with 12 statements on a 5-point Likert scale. The average percentage of 
agreement for each statement was calculated by taking the mean of responses, resulting 
in an overall agreement score ranging from strongly disagree (0 %) to strongly agree 
(100%). Additional self-report measures using Likert scales 
 
To investigate the impact of the clinic on education and other self-report measures two-
tailed t-tests were completed on data (education: PDKQ and Hei-Q; self-report measures: 
ABC, SEE, and PFS-16) with significance < .05. Using G-power (Faul 2009) an estimated 26 
participants were required to reach .80 power and .5 effect. It is important to note that this 
is a pilot study; therefore, it was not designed or powered to detect statistically significant 
differences between groups. Thus, all findings are considered preliminary. Data were 
analyzed using the data analysis package in Excel v.16.86. 
 
Consent 
This study was approved by the University of Rhode Island’s Institution Review Board # 
1929810-2. Written consent was obtained from all participants in the study.