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Kim Teron, co-chair of Partners Investing in Parkinson Research, is committed to helping find a cure for Parkinson’s disease, to help people like her husband, Ross Tuddenham.

The volunteers fuelling Partners Investing in Parkinson Research (PIPR) are connected by one fact: they all love someone with Parkinson’s disease.

And that love has inspired PIPR to raise more than $1 million in just six years for the Parkinson Research Consortium at The Ottawa Hospital.

“PIPR brings patients with Parkinson’s together,” said Kim Teron, PIPR co-chair. “These are the kind of people who go out and do something about Parkinson’s.”

What they are doing is raising money, mostly through Run for a Reason during Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend, to support research and attract world-class specialists. PIPR provides unrestrictive seed money to researchers, allowing the scientists to direct their own research and then leverage further grants.

“Now patients have access to coping mechanisms that would otherwise be available only in larger cities,” said Teron, whose husband, Ross Tuddenham, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2010. “Top researchers are drawn to The Ottawa Hospital because they see that the community supports research.”

Providing access to researchers is a further strength of PIPR. At every meeting, for example, a scientist from the research consortium talks to the group about developments, and PIPR members are invited to tour the research labs. Direct access opens doors for patients and their families to learn more about the disease, which affects 8,000 people in Ottawa.

“I have a direct connection to these high-level scientists,” said Tuddenham. “I get the most up-to-date information from a doctor who is also a researcher working on a cure with funds we have helped to raise. We are committed to one another’s cause.”

Tuddenham said the most valuable lesson was when he was assured that having Parkinson’s disease was not his fault, and in the next breath he was given the confidence to continue with his active life. Tuddenham still plays tennis and golf, swims and even lifts weights.

“Whatever I could do before I’m doing again nicely,” he said. “You have a choice every morning, and I’m choosing to live well with Parkinson’s.”

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