Georgia’s Parkinson’s Community Just Got a Local Home Base

Nothing quite prepares you for doing shoulder rolls to “9 to 5” at ten in the morning, but that’s exactly how the Georgia Chapter Parkinson’s Symposium kicked off, and by the second verse of “Jolene,” half the room, us included, had broken a sweat. Turns out movement therapy set to Dolly Parton is an excellent icebreaker, and also, as we’d learn over the next four hours, exactly the kind of low-key intervention that matters more than most people realize.

That’s the thing about this symposium: for years, a North Georgia family who wanted a real, in-depth look at where Parkinson’s treatment stands today had to drive into Atlanta for it. On August 29th, that changed for a day. The Parkinson’s Foundation brought its Georgia Chapter Symposium to the Forsyth Conference Center at Lanier Technical College, right here in Cumming, dance moves and all, and it drew people from across the region who wanted a straight answer to one real question: what actually helps, and what’s coming next?

We were there, sore muscles and all. Here’s what stood out, and what it means for the families we work with every day.

A Full Day, Not a Sales Pitch

The symposium ran from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., opening with check-in and a resource fair before the educational program began. That structure matters more than it might seem. A resource fair before the lecture hall means attendees could talk one-on-one with local organizations, ask questions in a low-pressure setting, and walk in already knowing where to turn for follow-up, rather than leaving with a stack of unfamiliar names.

A few people at that resource fair are worth naming directly. Taylor Thompson Otten, a therapy consultant in neuromodulation with Boston Scientific, spent real time walking through how deep brain stimulation actually works, patiently answering the kind of detailed, practical questions families don’t always get a chance to ask a device rep. Ken, representing AbbVie’s Vyalev team, did the same for continuous medication delivery. And the Parkinson’s Foundation had a full team on-site, Anna Kimberly, Development Manager, Aja Murray, Education and Outreach Coordinator, and Eric Nelson, Advancement Director, who spent the day connecting people to the Georgia Chapter’s ongoing resources long after the symposium ended. It’s easy to overlook the people staffing the tables in favor of the people at the podium, but for a lot of attendees, those one-on-one conversations were where the day’s information actually became personal and usable.

The speaker lineup reflected the same seriousness: Dr. Evan McCarroll Johnson of Piedmont Neurology, and Orla McQuade, FNP-C, and Dr. Thomas Wichmann, both of Emory Healthcare, alongside physical therapy, mental health, and movement specialists covering the practical side of living with Parkinson’s, not just the clinical side. Lunch was served, registration was free, and the event was open to people with Parkinson’s, their families, and the community.

The Treatment Landscape Has Genuinely Widened

For a long time, Parkinson’s treatment meant one thing: oral medication, primarily levodopa, taken on a fixed schedule and adjusted over the years as symptoms changed. That’s still the foundation of most people’s care. But one of the clearest takeaways from the symposium is how much the space around that foundation has grown.

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) came up as one of the more established surgical options. According to the Parkinson’s Foundation, DBS is an adjustable, reversible treatment that uses a surgically implanted device to deliver electrical stimulation to a precise target in the brain, most often the subthalamic nucleus. It’s approved for people who have lived with Parkinson’s for at least four years and who get real benefit from medication but are dealing with motor complications, like significant “off” time or dyskinesia, the involuntary movements that can come with long-term levodopa use. It’s worth being direct about its limits, too: DBS doesn’t work as well for balance problems or freezing of gait, and it’s generally not recommended for people also managing dementia or severe depression. More than 170,000 people worldwide have had the procedure, so it’s far from experimental, but it’s also not a fit for everyone, which is exactly the kind of conversation a movement disorder specialist is trained to walk a family through.

Continuous Medication Delivery Options

Continuous medication delivery was the other major thread, and it’s newer territory for a lot of families. Rather than timing pills throughout the day and riding out the gaps between doses, devices like Vyalev deliver levodopa and carbidopa continuously through a small pump worn under the skin, day and night, removed only for bathing. The FDA approved Vyalev in October 2024, and in Phase 3 trials it gave people with advanced Parkinson’s roughly three additional hours of good, controlled “on” time. Duopa, an earlier option, delivers a similar medication combination as a gel directly into the small intestine through a tube. Both exist for the same reason: the wide swings between “on” and “off” periods that oral medication alone can struggle to smooth out, especially overnight and first thing in the morning.

None of this is a recommendation for any specific treatment. What DBS, Vyalev, or Duopa might mean for one person could be entirely wrong for another, and that determination belongs to a neurologist or movement disorder specialist who knows the full picture. What the symposium made clear is simply that the menu of real, FDA-approved options has grown substantially, and it’s worth asking your care team directly whether any of them apply to you.

Emory Is Training the Next Generation of Specialists, Locally

One update from the Emory Healthcare speakers deserves its own mention. Emory’s Jean and Paul Amos Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Program, already one of the largest functional neurosurgery programs for Parkinson’s, tremor, and dystonia in the country, recently launched a Nurse Practitioner Fellowship in Movement Disorders, backed by a grant from the Parkinson’s Foundation and the McCamish Foundation. Over three years, the fellowship will train a total of eight nurse practitioners for independent practice in Parkinson’s and movement disorder care, each completing a full year immersed in the study and treatment of these conditions.

Why does a training program matter to a family in Cumming or Canton? Because the biggest practical barrier to good Parkinson’s care usually isn’t the science, it’s access. A designated Center of Excellence like Emory’s can only see so many patients with so few specialists. Every additional trained nurse practitioner is one more person capable of managing follow-up care, medication adjustments, and DBS programming closer to home, which shortens the distance between “there’s a good treatment for this” and “I can actually get in to be evaluated for it.”

Why This Belongs in North Georgia

There’s a reason it mattered that this symposium happened at the Forsyth Conference Center and not downtown Atlanta. Specialized Parkinson’s education has a way of staying concentrated in a handful of academic medical centers, which quietly tells families in surrounding counties that this kind of expertise isn’t really meant for them. A full-day, Parkinson’s Foundation-hosted event with Emory-affiliated speakers held in Cumming pushes back on that. It puts advanced, current information directly in front of the people who live here, without requiring a trip downtown just to hear it.

That matters for a second reason too. Parkinson’s is a long-term, whole-family condition, and the medical side, whatever combination of medication, therapy, or device a neurologist recommends, is only part of what daily life with it actually looks like. Someone managing a continuous medication pump still needs a stable daily routine and someone to notice if something’s off. Someone recovering from DBS surgery still needs support at home during that adjustment period. Someone newly diagnosed still needs help thinking through what changes at home will make the next several years easier rather than harder. The clinical advances discussed at the symposium and the day-to-day support a family provides aren’t separate tracks; they work best together.

The Person Standing Next to the Patient Needs Care Too

One of the quieter parts of the symposium’s agenda deserves more attention than it usually gets: Margaret Daniel, of Midtown Psychotherapy Associates and the Center for Movement Challenges, was there specifically to talk about the emotional and psychological side of living with Parkinson’s, and that includes the people doing the caregiving, not just the people diagnosed.

That inclusion isn’t incidental. A systematic review of caregiver burden research indexed by NIH’s National Library of Medicine, drawing on data from over 30,000 patients and their caregivers, found that a patient’s neuropsychiatric symptoms and a caregiver’s own psychological distress are the two strongest predictors of caregiver burden, more so than the physical demands of caregiving itself. In plain terms: the hardest part of caring for someone with Parkinson’s often isn’t the physical task list, it’s the emotional weight of watching a loved one change, managing mood and behavior symptoms alongside movement symptoms, and carrying that alone.

Parkinson’s is also, by nature, a condition where the caregiving role grows. A spouse who started out reminding a partner to take medication on schedule may, years later, be managing a continuous infusion pump, handling far more physical care, and doing it all while still working, raising a family, or managing their own health. Research on the long-term economic and personal cost of Parkinson’s caregiving backs this up: the burden compounds over time, not just in effort but in caregivers’ own quality of life.

None of that is a reason for alarm. It’s a reason to take the caregiver’s wellbeing as seriously as the patient’s, from the very beginning rather than after burnout sets in. That can mean something as simple as a caregiver support group, a therapist who understands Parkinson’s specifically, like the kind of resource Margaret Daniel represents, or bringing in outside help with day-to-day care tasks before exhaustion forces the decision. Asking for that support isn’t a failure to cope. It’s what makes it possible to keep showing up for the long haul that Parkinson’s usually requires.

What Families Can Do Next

If Parkinson’s touches your family, whether you were at the symposium or not, a few concrete next steps came out of the day:

Talk to your neurologist or movement disorder specialist directly about whether you’re a candidate for DBS or a continuous delivery option like Vyalev or Duopa, especially if you’re noticing more “off” time or medication-related side effects than you used to. These conversations are worth having proactively rather than waiting for a crisis point.

The Parkinson’s Foundation Helpline (1-800-4PD-INFO) and its PD Library are free, year-round resources, not just symposium-day offerings, and the Georgia Chapter (reachable at georgia@parkinson.org) can point you toward local support groups and future events.

If a loved one’s Parkinson’s is reaching the point where daily tasks, bathing, meals, medication reminders, getting around the house safely, have become harder to manage alone, that’s worth a conversation sooner rather than later. Waiting until a fall or a hospitalization forces the issue almost always means starting from a harder place than starting now would have been.

Where in-home care can help: Parkinson’s is one of Amada’s specialized care areas, not an afterthought we’re figuring out as we go. Our caregivers are trained specifically for what Parkinson’s actually requires day to day: recognizing the difference between an “on” period and an “off” one, timing meals and activity around medication windows instead of the clock, watching for fall risk as balance and gait change, and knowing when something’s different enough that it belongs in a call to the neurologist rather than waiting for the next appointment. We’re not a substitute for the medical team; DBS programming, medication management, and treatment decisions stay with your neurologist or movement disorder specialist, but we are the team that’s there for the hours in between, in your home, built around how Parkinson’s actually progresses rather than a generic care plan. If a loved one in your life is navigating a Parkinson’s diagnosis, we’re glad to talk through what that kind of support looks like. (Reachable at Info.cumming@amadasenior.com or (678) 744-5397).