Building Strength, Confidence and Connection.
Great care doesn’t always happen inside a hospital. Sometimes, it happens while walking around a community track, exercising alongside people who understand your challenges, or simply having a place to connect with others.
That is the idea behind Chalmers Foundation’s Health & Wellness Grants. Each year, the Foundation directs $25,000 from investment earnings to support Horizon Health Network programs that take healthcare beyond traditional hospital walls. With grants of up to $5,000, these projects support whole-person health, from healthy aging and physical activity to mental health, healthy eating and social connectedness.
One of those investments is helping people living with Parkinson’s disease keep moving and find community along the way.
More than an exercise program
Through a Chalmers Foundation Health & Wellness Grant, the DECRH Physiotherapy Department launched the Community Balance and Walking Program for People with Parkinson’s Disease. The first 12-week session ran from September to November 2025 at the Grant Harvey Centre, bringing together 10 participants, nine of whom completed the full program, for regular exercise, education and support.
The grant helped cover community space and 10 sets of Activator walking poles that participants used to build strength and stability. Sessions combined balance work, overground walking and dual-task exercises like mental math or naming games, while moving, challenging both body and mind.
Progress you can measure and connections you can feel
By the end of the 12 weeks, every participant had increased their walking speed and maintained or improved their endurance, helping lower their risk of falls while living with a chronic, progressive disease.
Participants also gave the program a 92% satisfaction rating. One participant pointed to “the patient bonding during our huddles,” while others spoke to the encouragement of the physiotherapy team and the comfort of connecting with people who understood what they were going through. Staff noticed the same thing: a peer bond had formed that one-on-one physiotherapy alone couldn’t offer.
And when the 12 weeks ended, the connection didn’t.
Participants joined the Parkinson’s Pacers, a walking group first formed during the program’s spring 2025 proof-of-concept trial. The group still meets weekly to stay active and support one another.
Care that reaches beyond hospital walls
This is what Health & Wellness Grants are designed to make possible. Sometimes improving healthcare means new equipment and technology inside the hospital. Other times, it means creating space in the community for people to build strength, maintain independence and feel less alone.
For people living with Parkinson’s disease, a community room, a set of walking poles and dedicated healthcare professionals have helped create something much bigger: a place to move, connect and keep moving forward together.
