Community News

Support PD Legislation Today

- Aug 07 2009

You can help pass a piece of legislation essential to the progress of Parkinson’s disease (PD) research.  How?  Contact your Members of Congress today through the website of the Parkinson’s Action Network (PAN), and ask them to co-sponsor the National Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson's Disease Registries Act (H.R. 1362/S.1273). 

Contact Your Members of Congress Now!
(This link will bring you to the PAN website, a site outside of www.pdf.org)

If enacted by Congress, this Act will create national registries for multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson's disease (PD) that will help us to measure the incidence (annual number of new cases) and prevalence (total number of cases) of the diseases.  These registries will help to solve the still unanswered questions: who has Parkinson's disease in the United States…and why.

Housed at the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in Atlanta, GA, the registries will collect information about individuals diagnosed with both diseases, including geographical information, age, race or ethnicity, gender, military service and family history.  This data may help uncover and inform promising areas of research such as genetic and environmental risk factors, geographic clusters of diagnoses, variances in gender ratio and more – that will help researchers to better understand both diseases and will provide the opportunity for consistent and coordinated treatment of people with PD nationwide.

Identical bills have been introduced in the House of Representatives (H.R. 1362) and Senate (S. 1273).  You can help by contacting your Members of Congress now to express your support – either by submitting an electronic letter directly through the Parkinson’s Action Network website, or by requesting an in-person meeting with during the August recess.

The Parkinson’s Action Network is the Washington-based advocacy presence of the PD community.  In 2010, PDF is supporting PAN with a grant of $200,000.  PAN, working closely with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, is leading grassroots advocacy efforts to support H.R. 1362 and S. 1273. 

PDF hopes you will join in the effort to help enact H.R. 1362 and S. 1273 by contacting your Members of Congress. 

Learn More About the National MS and PD Registries Act

Act Today:  Contact Your Representative

Act Today: Contact Your Senator

Source Date: Aug 11 2009