10,000 Step Club: Community Walking Program for People with Parkinson's Disease

Official title

10,000 STEP CLUB: Community Walking Program to Decrease Sedentary Behavior, Fear of Falling Avoidance Behavior, Loneliness, and Social Isolation in Parkinson's Disease

Overview

The 10,000 Step Club (10KSTC) is a 6-month community walking program for people with Parkinson's disease (PwP) and their caregivers in Las Vegas, Nevada (LV). This program will consist of several weekly, organized walking groups in local parks throughout the LV Valley. Participants in the program will use Nordic walking poles during the walks. Each walking group will meet once per week at a local park and will be supervised by walking group leaders from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. There will be three walking programs throughout the Las Vegas valley. Participants will be given a step watch to wear step counts will be tracked in real-time. The program is designed to get PwP out of their homes, cultivate a culture of connection with others with Parkinson's disease (PD), and to be collectively accountable for a common goal toward 10,000 steps per day.

Detailed description

The 10,000 Step Club (10KSC) is a 6-month community walking program conducted at various local parks in Las Vegas (LV), Nevada for people with Parkinson's disease (PD). There will be three walking groups and each group will meet at a local park once weekly for a 60-minute walk. These walking groups will be led by UNLV physical therapy students who will organize, coordinate, and manage the different walking groups. Participants will be encouraged to attend at least one walking group per week in their area but will be permitted to participate at the other walking groups on different days if they desire to get in a second or third walk that week. Participants in the program will use Nordic walking poles to promote stability and upright posture, and to encourage full body movement and arm use.

There will be three different walking groups throughout Las Vegas in areas with few PD exercise programs and higher proportions of people with Parkinson's disease in lower socioeconomic regions and historically underserved areas. The 10KSC program will be offered in both English and Spanish. Participants will be given a step watch to wear over the 6 months of the program and will be encouraged to build up their physical activity to eventually average 10,000 steps per day. The watches will be used to track step counts in real-time and there will be an incentive program to motivate participants and recognize achievements related to program goals. The program is designed to get people with Parkinson's disease out of their homes, cultivate a culture of connection with others with Parkinson's disease to decrease social isolation and loneliness, and to be collectively accountable for a common goal toward more physical activity. The 10KSC will be evaluated for effectiveness, feasibility, and safety. The program will target recruitment of 60 participants with Parkinson's disease. Participation will be free of charge and care partners will be encouraged to participate as well. The program inclusion criteria will be "pragmatic" which means that there will be few exclusion criteria and the only inclusion criterion will be a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease by a neurologist.

Interventions

• Behavioral Community walking program using Nordic walking poles
  This is a group, community walking program at local parks using Nordic walking poles. Participants will be encouraged to walk briskly but safely for 60 minutes one time per week with the ultimate goal of using this community walking program to build up their step count to 10,000 steps per day. We do not anticipate that the weekly walk will get them to 10,000 steps but we will use that as a weekly event to drive behavioral change throughout the week.

Primary outcome measures

• Daily step count average [Time frame: From enrollment to the end of the 6-month community walking program.]
• Fear of Falling Avoidance Behavior [Time frame: From enrollment to the end of the 6-month community walking program.]
• Social isolation [Time frame: From enrollment to the end of the 6-month community walking program.]
• Loneliness [Time frame: From enrollment to the end of the 6-month community walking program.]
• Self-efficacy [Time frame: From enrollment to the end of the 6-month community walking program.]

Secondary outcome measures (3)

• Program goals - feasibility [Time frame: Through the completion of the study, an average of 6-months.]
• Program goals - safety [Time frame: Through the completion of the study, an average of 6-months.]
• Enrollment goals - diversity [Time frame: Through the completion of the study, an average of 6-months.]

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion criteria

• 30-85 years old
• Neurologist-diagnosed Parkinson\'s disease
• Able to walk independently with or without a walking aid (e.g., cane, walker)
• Willing to participate in a 6-month study

Exclusion criteria

• Health diagnosis that would limit exercise participation (e.g., heart problems, uncontrolled blood pressure, exercise-induced asthma).
• Dementia. This will be determined by completing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment
• Participants with poor walking ability (determined using the Timed Up and Go Test during initial testing).

Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.

Healthy volunteers: No

Study design

Allocation

N/A

Model

Single group

Masking

Open label

Primary purpose

Treatment

Study locations

United States · 1 center

• Gait and Balance Laboratory, 217 Bigelow Health Sciences Building, UNLV — Las Vegas

Identifiers

NCT: NCT06605183 · UNLVPT 10KSC

Primary sources (government registries)

• ClinicalTrials.gov (US NIH)

View this study on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗