A New Continuing Education Course for Genetic Counseling in Parkinson Disease: James Beck, PhD

WATCH TIME: 4 minutes

“What we wanted to do was create a series of courses to help better familiarize clinicians, neurologists, physician assistants, and others [about] what it means to offer genetic counseling for people with PD—what are some of the unique aspects of disease when it comes to genetics, compared to other diseases?”

The Parkinson’s Foundation was recently granted Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Education as a provider of continuing education, simultaneously announcing its newest free course, Genetic Counseling for Parkinson’s Disease. The hour-and-a-half-long training was developed to increase awareness of Parkinson disease (PD), focusing specifically on those who get genetic testing and counseling. James Beck, PhD, senior vice president and chief scientific officer, Parkinson’s Foundation, spoke with NeurologyLive^® on these recent developments and the new course, which covers different genes and variants that are important for PD, as well as how this knowledge can be actively applied in clinical practice.

The Parkinson’s Foundation has already established PD GENEration Program, which offers free genetic testing and counseling to those with PD, which then encouraged the organization to further their efforts in engaging members of the clinical community, Beck said. While PD may be a primary focus for movement disorder specialists, there are other clinicians who may not interact with these patients as often and will thus benefit from a course intended to improve understanding of PD overall. Joint Accreditation “streamlines the process” of acknowledging the needs within the patient community and clinical community to provide training that can benefit health care professionals who can then improve care for patients with PD.

To register for the Parkinson's Foundation Genetic Counseling for Parkinson’s Disease course, click here.