Professional Interests
epidemiology of genetic forms of Parkinson’s disease (PD), prognosis and environmental etiology of PD and evaluating clinical assessment tools in PD.
Impact
Connie Marras MD, PhD is a Professor of Neurology at the University of Toronto and movement disorders neurologist at the University Health Network, Toronto, Canada. She also holds the position of Vice-Chair of the research ethics board of the University Health Network. From 2010-2018 she served as Associate Editor of the Movement Disorders Journal. She has also served on or serves on the Scientific Advisory Board foundations dedicated to Parkinson’s Research including the Michael J Fox Foundation (MJFF) and the Parkinson’s Foundation (US). She served on the executive committee of the Pan American Section of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (IPMDS), served as chair of the IPMDS Epidemiology study group and currently serves as chair of the IPMDS task forces for Genetic Nomenclature and PD Subtypes.
Her contributions to research include over 180 peer-reviewed papers as well as leadership roles in large multicentre studies. Her research focuses on the clinical heterogeneity of PD, as well as quality of care and quality of life. Recent work includes study of physician-patient communication related to OFF periods in PD, and examining what bothers patients most through analysis of verbatim PD Patient Report of Problems (PD-PROP). She serves as the Principal Investigator for the US Parkinson’s Foundation Parkinson’s Outcomes Project, a longitudinal project focused on improving quality of care that has enrolled over 13,000 patients from 30 Parkinson’s Foundation Centres of Excellence in five countries. She holds a position on the Executive Steering Committee for Fox Insight, an online data collection platform for patient reported outcomes in PD sponsored by the MJFF that has enrolled over 30,000 participants.
Priti Yveline Gros
MSc Graduate Student
Thesis: Parkinson disease progression measures in health services data: laying the groundwork for studying exposure to PGK1as and Parkinson disease in a future randomized controlled trial
Supervisors: Susan E. Bronskill, Connie Marras