Lighting up Essex for World Parkinson's Day

A building at the heart of the Colchester Campus is going to be lit blue to mark World Parkinson’s Day on Friday 11 April 2025.

The day is aimed at shining a light on people with Parkinson’s, and the people who love and care for them.

New service launched for people with Parkinson's

The University’s Health, Wellbeing and Care Hub has just launched a 'Living well with Parkinson’s' group.

The new Parkinson’s group is a programme aimed at those with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, who are looking for education and support to live well.

The programme is delivered by the Health, Wellbeing and Care Hub clinical team over a series of in-person weekly workshops, with the support of our students who are on clinical placement in the Hub.

Guest speakers include researchers from the University of Essex and local charitable organisations, with trainee (student) therapists and nurses in all of our sessions. A friend or relative may also attend with you.

During the programme those attending will be able to seek support and guidance from a number of health professions, including Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy and nursing.

To access this service, please email healthwellbeingcare@essex.ac.uk and a member of the team will be in touch to discuss your referral.

More information about the Health, Wellbeing and Care Hub services is available here: www.essex.ac.uk/centres-and-institutes/health-wellbeing-and-care-hub/our-services

Research on Parkinson’s at Essex

Many Essex researchers are involved in research around treating Parkinson’s and supporting people with Parkinson’s.

Heads Together

Professor Andrew Bateman is leading a project on “acquired brain injury” – this refers to any injury to the brain that occurs after birth so includes diseases such as Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, or a medical event such as a stroke or a brain haemorrhage.

Patients who have an acquired brain injury can have a long road to recovery and physical rehabilitation, and in some cases a return to their previous full health may not be possible. This has a long-term impact on the patient and their families. As a result, treatment and life after these injuries will involve a multi-care team of healthcare and social work professionals.

However, social workers may have limited understanding of acquired brain injuries, especially since the term covers a broad spectrum of medical conditions. This can make it hard for the right package of support to be put in place as needs may not be fully understood. A lack of support can lead to serious consequences, such as homelessness, drug or alcohol addiction or suicide.

The Heads Together projects funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) is developing a range of educational resources on acquired brain injuries.

These resources will involve input from those who have an acquired brain injuries and their families, as well as social workers and their managers, to identify where gaps in service knowledge exist. The resources will be made available to social workers to help improve professional practice. Service users and their families will also have access to these resources to help improve understanding of life after a brain injury and help with advocacy for support services.

Find out more

New techniques to support research

Dr Ben Skinner is leading a project to develop new techniques to reveal the cause of Parkinson’s disease.

The number of cases of Parkinson’s disease has more than doubled in the last 15 years and this cannot fully be attributed to an increase in life expectancy.

We know that Parkinson’s ultimately leads to the death of dopamine-producing cells in the base of the brain. However, the specific causes, be they environmental or behavioural, are still not fully understood. This in turn causes difficulties in developing effective treatments or even cures.

At the moment, research into Parkinson’s disease can be very expensive and time consuming. Such research is dependent on animal testing and, for projects that go beyond that stage, human testing as well, which have significant legal and ethical considerations.

This interdisciplinary research project aims to aid research into Parkinson’s disease without relying on living creatures, by developing a new in-vitro platform to investigate Parkinson’s disease and potentially other neurodegenerative disorders.

Find out more

Remembering loved ones

Many of us know people impacted by Parkinson’s Disease today is a day to think about them.

In December, we published a tribute to the late Professor Debi Roberson who lived with Parkinson’s Disease and was one of the first patients to undergo a cell-replacement trial and was one of the first 8 humans in the world to receive neurosurgery to lay down a lattice of stem cells that were force-evolved into dopamine progenitors.

Help and support

To find out more about the work of Parkinson’s UK visit: www.parkinsons.org.uk/