Power for Parkinson’s co-founders and directors Susan Stahl and Nina Mosier started the organization four years ago hoping to provide free exercise and dance classes to people with Parkinson’s disease.
Both Mosier’s and Stahl’s passion for helping those with Parkinson’s stems from their personal experience as caretakers for their fathers. Stahl’s father died in 2012 from Parkinson’s, motivating her to create the program. Mosier’s father is still living with the disease.
“At that time we were recognizing how important it was that people with Parkinson’s exercise and how few programs there are throughout the country that actually offered that service,” Mosier said.
Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease that can affect gait functions, cognitive processes and vocal functions. Mosier said exercise has proven to increase motor skills, balance, voice and cognition.
