Prior Funding

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a debilitating, costly, and understudied neurologic disease that affects over 1 million people in the US. PD can lead to profound disability and isolation, with 100-200,000 patients becoming homebound. Once homebound, many people are unable to access routine preventive and neurologic care, yet this exact population experiences a surge in emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and nursing home placement, all of which are associated with higher risks of complications and death than people without PD. People with advanced PD are also at a high risk of contracting and being hospitalized for influenza and pneumonia compared to similarly-aged individuals without PD, and we hypothesize that this may be due in part to a lack of access to preventive care. The aims of this proposal are to 1) determine the baseline rates of vaccination among homebound and non-homebound people with PD; 2) to elicit the patient- and caregiver-reported barriers to vaccinations; 3) to test the feasibility of giving recommended vaccinations to homebound patients as part of an existing home visit program, and 4) to compare the rates of illness and healthcare utilization prior to and during the study.