Promising moves: development of reporting standards of dance intervention studies for people with Parkinson’s

Dance as an alternative intervention for people with Parkinson’s has gained in popularity over the last two decades and scientific evidence for the physiological and psychological benefits of dance for people with Parkinson’s is increasing. However, the publications rarely provide specific details about the interventions. We feel that this knowledge is important to advance research and develop dance interventions since Parkinson’s is a heterogenous disease and individual elements of dance support people with Parkinson’s in unique ways. We thus give an overview of facets of dance and discuss how they have been found to impact people with Parkinson’s differently. We argue that a systematic reporting standard is needed to enable cross-studies comparisons of the outcome measures. We therefore propose the development of a unified reporting tool that would facilitate evidence-based care and consequently improve outcomes for patient-centred dance interventions for people with Parkinson’s and other vulnerable cohorts.