June 19, 2013

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For a half century, the staff of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Dodd Hall have been helping people with physical disabilities improve their lives. The 60-bed facility, home to Ohio State’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, enjoys a long history of national recognition for its pioneering research, excellent patient care and leadership.

Named for Verne. A. Dodd, MD, an Ohio State surgeon and educator, Dodd Hall will celebrate 50 years of excellence in physical medicine and rehabilitation with an invitation-only event for patients and staff from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday outside the facility at 480 Medical Center Drive. Media are invited to cover the event. Brief remarks by University and Wexner Medical Center leaders will begin at noon.

For the majority of its 50 years, Dodd Hall was led by Ernie Johnson, MD, who created the department in the early 1960s. Johnson is considered one of the foremost authorities in the world and the top in the nation on electromyography (EMG), a diagnostic tool that measures electrical impulses in muscle. During his career, Johnson instructed nearly 300 physiatry residents, instilling in them the patient-first philosophy that characterized his career. To help young physicians better understand what their patients were facing, Johnson encouraged them to learn to do a wheelchair “wheelie.”

For 19 consecutive years, Ohio State’s rehabilitation program has been ranked among the best in the country by U.S. News & World Report. Ohio State has the only rehabilitation program in central Ohio certified for both traumatic brain injury and stroke, and Ohio State is one of seven centers nationwide that are part of the NeuroRecovery Network, which uses activity-based therapies for spinal cord injury rehabilitation.

Staff at Dodd Hall continue to focus on the restoration of health and function for people with a wide range of neurologic conditions including amputation, brain injury, Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, spinal cord injury and stroke. As researchers and educators, staff advance scientific understanding and practices related to physical medicine and rehabilitation, and also train healthcare providers in multiple specialty areas.

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Contact: Eileen Scahill, Wexner Medical Center Public Affairs and Media Relations, 614-293-3737, or Eileen.Scahill@osumc.edu

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