{"id":1801,"date":"2013-01-22T15:52:10","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T21:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/?p=1801"},"modified":"2013-03-05T07:56:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T13:56:24","slug":"ot-advisory-board-member-named-person-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/2013\/01\/22\/ot-advisory-board-member-named-person-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"OT Advisory Board Member named Person of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Rutherford Photography<\/p><\/div>\n

New Mobility<\/em> magazine, a national publication that encourages the integration of active-lifestyle wheelchair users into mainstream society, has named newly-elected Tennessee State Representative Darren Jernigan as its Person of the Year.\u00a0\u00a0 Jernigan serves on the Advisory Board for the Belmont University School of Occupational Therapy.<\/p>\n

In November, Jernigan defeated incumbent state representative Jim Gotto for a seat in the Tennessee state legislature.\u00a0\u00a0 Since 2007 he has been a Nashville city councilman, winning re-election in 2011 with 77 percent of the vote.\u00a0 Jernigan is employed as director of government affairs at Permobil, Inc., an international company with its USA Corporate Offices in Lebanon, Tennessee.\u00a0 Permobil develops and manufactures powered wheelchairs and transport and communication systems for people with functional disabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great honor for Darren,\u201d said Dr. Scott McPhee, Associate Dean in the Belmont University School of Occupational Therapy.\u00a0 \u201cDarren has had long involvement with our School \u2013 both as a client and member of our advisory board.\u00a0 Occupational Therapy has long been involved with the community reintegration of clients such as Darren.\u00a0 Becoming advocates for those who have special needs is central to what we teach our students as well as experience in our daily practices.\u00a0 Darren provides deep insights to what this means and serves as a role model for many.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jernigan has degrees in political science and public relations and studied International Health Care reform abroad in London, England.\u00a0 He began his career in Washington D.C. as a security specialist with the US Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security.\u00a0 In 1996, he relocated to Capitol Hill to work in the House of Representatives and later in public relations at the Veterans Administration.\u00a0 Jernigan has been in a wheelchair for over 20 years after sustaining a spinal cord injury in an automobile accident.<\/p>\n

Jernigan\u2019s honor is accompanied by a feature story<\/a> in the January issue of New Mobility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Mobility magazine, a national publication that encourages the integration of active-lifestyle wheelchair users into mainstream society, has named newly-elected Tennessee State Representative Darren Jernigan as its Person of the Year.\u00a0\u00a0 Jernigan serves on the Advisory Board for the Belmont … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chs","category-occupational-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1873,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}