Nicole Leith

MONTH IN REVIEW | July 2023

by

One of the best things about July is welcoming the newest Movement Disorders Fellows. Dr. Ondrea Timmermann and Dr. Bridget Ollesch started their training at the beginning of the month. 

Dr. Timmermann was born and grew up in West Virginia. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in biology from Alderson Broaddus University and her medical degree from West Virginia School of Medicine. She then moved to Illinois to complete her residency where she realized her interest in movement disorders. To meet her aspiration of becoming a movement disorders expert, she finds herself in Colorado to continue her education and training. 

Dr. Ollesch was born in central Illinois. She received her undergraduate degree in religious studies at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. She then completed her medical school at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield, Illinois. She left the Midwest to complete her residency at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She is excited to continue her training in Movement Disorders at the University of Colorado.

Dr. Ondrea Timmermann

Are you interested in supporting the education of our fellows? Learn more, including how, by visiting our Fund-a-Fellow page.

Summer is well underway now; we hope you are enjoying the warm weather safely. The faculty and staff of the Movement Disorders Center have been busy planning exciting events for later this summer and this fall.

Are you interested in receiving our once-monthly newsletter?

Subscribe here!

MONTH IN REVIEW | June 2023

by
Subscribe to MDC eNews

Congratulations to our 2023 Movement Disorders Fellowship Graduates!

Congratulations to Dr. Heather Heiser and Dr. Antonia Pusso for completing their Movement Disorders Fellowship. Dr. Heiser will be starting practice as a movement disorder and general neurologist in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Pusso will be continuing her training with a Palliative Fellowship at the University of Colorado. We wish them the best of luck in their next journey and look forward to hearing all of the great things they are doing.

Dr. Brooke Heffernan and Dr. Matthew Woodward have been promoted to their second year of fellowship and we are excited to welcome two new first-year fellows on July 5, 2023. Be sure to welcome Dr. Ollesch and Dr. Timmerman if you see them in the clinic.

We also want to send congratulations to Dr. Michelle Fullard who has been awarded the NIH K-12 Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health. This prestigious, two-year award is designed to support junior faculty who are interested in a career in women’s health research. Way to go, Dr. Fullard!

Finally, congratulations to Dr. Jeanne Feuerstein and Dr. Matthew Wooward for their poster presentation at the Samuel Belzberg 6th International Dystonia Symposium.

We invite you to help the Movement Disorders Center honor 10 years of providing our annual education day to the Parkinson’s community by joining the faculty and staff this fall.

Our free, hybrid event will be on Saturday, October 28 from 9:00 am-2:00 pm and the Anschutz Health Sciences Building or virtually via Zoom. The event is designed for people with Parkinson’s disease, care partners, and families. Healthcare professionals and anyone interested in learning more about Parkinson’s Disease are welcome.

The symposium is given by a team of experts and aims to update the community about Parkinson’s disease. We are excited to have some of our agenda announced on our event page. You’ll also find a link to register.

One of the ways we are celebrating our anniversary is by creating a top ten list of things that people with Parkinson’s disease and their care partners wish they knew sooner. We’d love to hear from you! Enter your answers via our event page and we’ll create an anonymous list of the top ten answers.

All of this information and links can be found on our event page. Click the button below to view the page.

10th Annual PD Symposium

MONTH IN REVIEW | May 2023

by

May is Huntington’s Disease Awareness Month!

The University of Colorado Movement Disorders Center will host its annual Huntington’s Disease Education Day on October 7, 2023. More details will come soon. Follow our Facebook page to learn more.

On May 17, the MDC hosted its annual Research Retreat. Each year, the Movement Disorders Center brings together basic science researchers and clinical researchers to discuss the research going on for Movement Disorders across campus and across the state of Colorado. Many of these projects are still underway, but we look forward to sharing results with you when we are able.

As we move into summer, we look forward to seeing the Movement Disorders Community at many great, annual events.

Subscribe!
May Newsletter

MONTH IN REVIEW | April 2023

by

Our e-newsletter is back! You can subscribe here and you can read the April 2023 newsletter now.

In April, the Movement Disorders Center hosted Beatriz Nielsen, PhD for an Interdisciplinary talk to our faculty and staff. Dr. Nielsen received the Parkinson’s Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for Basic Scientists.

The Movement disorders neurologist attended the American Academy of Neurology’s Annual Meeting in Boston or virtually. This is an opportunity for neurologists to come together and learn from each other. The conference highlights topics such as interesting research and upcoming therapies. Dr. Kern, Dr. Fullard, and Dr. Holden presented at this year’s conference. Our providers also use this as a chance to network with their peers from across the country.

In honor of Administrative Professionals Day, thank you to the amazing administrators in the Movement Disorders group – our research coordinators, our schedulers, our clinic management, our extensive research team, and the academic administrative team. Thank you for all that you do!

Some exciting news about the Anschutz Campus – Garage 2 opened on April 26. The garage is for patient parking and is located outside of the Anschutz Outpatient Pavilion. We hope this makes your experience as a patient more enjoyable; we’ve been waiting for the garage to open for a while.

More details are coming soon about our 10th Annual Parkinosn’s Disease Symposium this fall. We look forward to great speakers and fund door prizes.

We are also excited to announce that we have set a date for our annual Huntington’s Disease Education Day. Mark your calendars for October 7, 2023.

The Movement Disorders Center is now on Facebook! Follow our page to learn about Movement Disorders news as it happens.

Subscribe!
April Newsletter!

2023 World Parkinson Disease Day

by

April 11 is World Parkinson Disease Day. The faculty and staff at the University of Colorado are proud to work with the Parkinson Community. While patient care is a large part of our care for the Parkinson’s community, there is a lot more they do outside of the clinic.

The Anschutz Medical Campus is a training facility for upcoming medical providers. Our faculty participates in the education of young medical students and residents. Additionally, we have a movement disorders fellowship program to train the next generation of movement disorders neurologists. In addition to becoming part of our own faculty, these trainees have gone on to serve movement disorders communities in underserved areas and continue clinical research in their own practices. You can learn more about our program and its importance by visitng our Fund-a-Fellow page.

Our faculty are also leading research to find new therapies or better understand Parkinson disease. This research can include trials of potential new medications or devices. It also includes research projects initiated by our own faculty that help patients and care partners. If you are interested in learning more about our research, we have a research catalog and a research website for you to view. If you are interested in participating in clinical research, contact our research recruitment team. Many resources are available in English and Spanish.
e-mail: NeuroResearch@cuanschutz.edu
phone: 303-724-4644
webform

In 2022, our faculty provided 64 formal talks to patients, care partners, medical providers, and medical learners. These talks were regional, national, and international. Our faculty finds so much value in providing access to updated information to the Parkinson’s community to help them take control of their health. If you are interested in having someone speak to your group, please reach out to movement@ucdenver.edu.

In addition, we will host our 10th Annual Parkinson Disease Symposium on October 28, 2023. Follow our Facebook page for updated details. You can look for an event page on our website soon. We look forward to an informational and exciting day with many special extras this year.

The University of Colorado Movement Disorders Center looks forward to continuing these missions in 2023 and beyond. We look forward to connecting with you.

Intradepartmental Grant Winners

by

Congratulations to Dr. Jeanne Feuerstein and Dr. Emily Forbes who received the 2022-23 Neurology Intradepartmental Grant Award this year. Since 2016, the University of Colorado Department of Neurology has provided funding to junior faculty to protect their time to develop new research concepts. This award funding lasts for one year.

Previous winners from the movement disorders group include Dr. Michelle Fullard, Dr. Drew Kern, Dr. Christina Vaughan, and Dr. Isabelle Buard.

Congratulations, Dr. Feuerstein and Dr. Forbes!

Transitions

by

The Movement Disorders Center is growing again! A handful of providers have moved on from our center for various personal reasons, including retirement and spouses being transferred to new positions. But we are excited to welcome new faculty to our group.

The faculty and staff at the center continue to be dedicated to improving the lives of people with movement disorders.

We announced in our newsletter that Dr. Alex Baumgartner and Dr. Michael Korsmo will be graduating from our fellowship program and will be joining us as faculty in August. Both bring niched areas of expertise that will help round out our center.

Dr. Baumgartner will be joining Dr. Kern as part of our advanced therapies and deep brain stimulation (DBS) team in the operating room. In the past few years, the number of DBS surgeries performed yearly has nearly doubled. The team has recently added a new neurosurgeon and more programmers as well. Dr. Baumgartner will see patients in the clinic at the Anschutz Medical Campus and in Lone Tree.

Dr. Korsmo will be expanding our reach to underserved communities. In addition, he will be seeing patients at our main clinic on the Anschutz Medical Campus and at our Boulder clinic.

Dr. Vaughan is expanding her neuro-palliative clinic. Her clinic will now be found at the Anschutz Medical Campus. By moving her clinic, Dr. Vaughan and her patients will have access to more services and resources. Her focus will now be neuro-palliative care; the main difference is that she will not be the primary movement disorders specialist for patients. She will still serve the movement disorders community through neuro-palliative care during all stages of diseases. She will still be available to all patients for neuro-palliative care via telehealth.

For more information about neuro-palliative care, you can read our Fall 2021 newsletter.

MDC Receives Parkinson’s Foundation Award

by

The University of Colorado Movement Disorders Center received an award from the Parkinson’s Foundation for the Highest Team Participation for the Parkinson’s Foundation Palliative Care Education Course. The award was presented at this year’s COE Leadership Conference and was accepted by Ryan Khan, a chaplain who works closely with our Palliative Care team.

In 2020, the Parkinson’s Foundation launched an initiative to make palliative care a standard practice of care across all Centers of Excellence in the United States. The MDC received the award for being the Center of Excellence (COE) with the most team members who have completed the online Palliative Care Training.

The Movement Disorders Center is honored to receive this award in recognition to our dedication to patient care.

Dr. Fullard Receives New Grant Award

by

Congratulations to Dr. Michelle Fullard who has received the 2022 Lorna Grindlay Moore, Ph.D., Faculty Launch Fund award. This award is dedicated to research in women’s health across the lifespan. Proposals were open to faculty in any of the CU Denver or Anschutz Medical Campus schools or colleges. Dr. Fullard’s project and proposal for Parkinson disease ranked highest among all applicants.

We look forward to sharing more about Dr. Fullard’s project soon.

Are you interested in participating in research? Check out our actively recruiting studies or subscribe to our Neurology Research Database to participate in clinical trials and receive updates about future research.

Dr. Baumgartner Receives CCTSI Pilot Grant Award

by
movement disorders specialist colorado

Congratulations to Dr. Alex Baumgartner for being awarded the CCTSI Pilot Grant Award for his project titled “Naturalistic sleep assessed by wearable devices and direct recording of the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson’s disease.” This grant will expand on the research that Dr. Baumgarter did with the University of Colorado Movement Disorders Center Pilot Grant award that he received in the fall of 2020. We look forward to hearing the results of his study in the future. 

Through the University of Colorado Movement Disorders Center Pilot Grant Award, the MDC awards selected early-career clinical and bench researchers a small, monetary award. Awardees have included young researchers in different specialties that overlap with movement disorders. This award allows researchers to collect initial data they might need to win more prestigious awards with larger budgets. Previous awards have led to publications in scholarly journals and funding from the NIH and Dystonia Coalition, among others.

Each year the MDC puts out a request for proposals. Interested applicants fill out a detailed proposal and submit it. The MDC faculty review each proposal and selects proposals that are within budget, are well-planned, and are valuable to the movement disorders community. The pilot grant process gives young researchers exposure to the grant application process. Additionally, it helps garner career-long interest in movement disorders research across disciplines.

For researchers who may be interested in applying for the Movement Disorders Center Pilot Grant Award, please join our Movement Disorders Center to be the first to hear about the Request for Applications and more opportunities for collaboration. More information can be found here.

For our movement disorders community, you can learn more about the phases of research and how to participate here. You can find a list of our current studies here.

If you are interested in supporting the Movement Disorder Center Pilot Grant Program, please contact our CU Foundation office (303-724-9146) or visit their donation website.