Early results from our Bone Health Improvement project

The Bone Health Improvement project (Better bone health) began in 2021 and is being led by Dr Donald Grosset, Clinical Director of the Excellence Network, along with an Excellence Network steering group.

Did you know that people with Parkinson’s are more than twice as likely to have osteoporosis and fractures than those without the condition and it can affect both men and women? Yet many people with Parkinson's aren’t routinely assessed for fracture risk. 

The project - what did we do?

To address these issues, we launched a national better Bone Health Improvement project last year and invited elderly care and neurology services who participated in the 2019 Audit to take part. 43 services from across the UK signed up to the project and overall they entered data on 1,131 patients.

Early results from the project

We're still analysing the full results but our initial findings are positive. Download our Bone Health Improvement project update (PDF, 162KB). Many of the clinicians involved told us that they had not routinely done systematic bone health assessments on their patients prior to involvement with this initiative and that they found the process much easier than they’d expected.

Next steps

We're currently producing a report to summarise the findings from the project which we will make widely available shortly. We also want to develop some top tips to help people with Parkinson's look after their bone health, as well as tips and resources for healthcare services. 

To keep up to date with developments on better bone health, visit the Excellence Network national priority programmes page.