West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito helped introduce a bill tackling Parkinson’s disease back in 2022, and on Tuesday, the bill was officially signed into law.
The “Dr. Emmanuel Bilirakis and Honorable Jennifer Wexton National Plan to End Parkinson’s Act” was first introduced by Senator Capito and Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy in September 2022, but it was on Tuesday that U.S. President Joe Biden turned it into law.
The legislation states that the Department of Health and Human Services will be required to “develop and evaluate progress on a government-wide plan to address Parkinson’s and related diseases, and to require the convening of a Parkinson’s advisory committee.”
This committee will be expected to help coordinate federal efforts, evaluate current programs, write up a national plan and report progress to Congress, according to a release from the office of Senator Capito.
“Now that this legislation is officially law, the federal government can unite around our mission of ending this disease, and establish a responsible plan that increases diagnosis and treatment, and supports research efforts already underway,” Capito said.
The bill passed the U.S. House in December, then made its way through the U.S. Senate in May before heading towards the White House. The legislation efforts were led by the Michael J. Fox Foundation and thousands of members from the Parkinson’s community.
Around 7,000 people in West Virginia live with Parkinson’s disease out of an estimated 1.2 million in the U.S. The state is considered to have the third-highest Parkinson’s disease rate in the nation.