We are pleased to announce that Amy Darragh, PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA, will serve as interim director and interim associate dean of the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (HRS) in the College of Medicine, effective Friday, July 1, 2022. Current HRS director, Deborah Larsen, PhD, PT, FAPTA, will retire at the end of June with more than 32 years of extraordinary contributions and dedicated service to patients, students, faculty and staff.
Dr. Darragh joined the faculty at The Ohio State University College of Medicine’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences in 2008 as an assistant professor, becoming associate professor in 2015 and rising to full professor in 2021. Since 2014, she has served as the director of the Division of Occupational Therapy, which features the nation’s 13th-ranked Occupational Therapy Doctorate program and the online Assistive and Rehabilitative Technology Certificate program. She has held several important leadership roles on The Ohio State University Senate and is currently chair-elect of the University Senate Faculty Council. She is also an affiliate faculty member at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Darragh is an inclusive leader, who embraces shared decision making, mentorship, employee engagement and interprofessional collaboration to establish a positive, welcoming culture. A licensed occupational therapist and funded researcher, her research interests include clinical trials in intensive pediatric neurorehabilitation and virtual and digital technology interventions. She currently is a principal investigator for the NIH-funded National Pediatric Rehabilitation Resource Center, a core investigator for I-ACQUIRE, the nation’s first phase III clinical trial in pediatric stroke recovery and rehabilitation, and principal investigator on several studies examining the use of digital and virtual technologies in pediatric and adult interventions. She has presented her work at more than 120 national and international conferences and has published more than 60 journal articles.
She earned her PhD in Environmental Health Epidemiology and her MS in Occupational Therapy from Colorado State University.
Join HRS students, faculty and staff as we welcome Dr. Darragh to her new role!