Alana Shepherd Receives Healthcare Georgia Foundation’s Community Service Award

Healthcare Georgia Foundation has awarded the Joseph D. Greene Community Service Award for 2010 to Shepherd Center co-founder Alana Shepherd for her outstanding community service in healthcare.

The award honors extraordinary individuals and non-profit organizations that are committed to improving the quality of health and healthcare of those they serve. Mrs. Shepherd, along with six other recipients of the award, were honored in a ceremony on March 31 at the Westin Buckhead Atlanta hotel.

“Healthcare Georgia Foundation is honored to recognize this year’s recipients of the Joseph D. Greene Community Service Award for their unselfish, charitable acts, which have been given freely from the heart and with significant benefits to the health of Georgians,” said Gary D. Nelson, president of Healthcare Georgia Foundation.

By recognizing those who inspire and lift others up, Healthcare Georgia Foundation hopes that Mr. Greene’s legacy of community service will continue through the work of others. Mr. Greene was a founding member of the Healthcare Georgia Foundation board. He helped steward the organization from its inception in 1999 through his retirement from the board in 2006. Mr. Green passed away in November 2007 after a battle with cancer.

Mrs. Shepherd was nominated for the Greene Community Service Award by Shepherd Center Director of Advocacy Mark Johnson. In his nomination, Mark said: “Alana is a role model for community leadership. She is a classic example of someone who has an idea and just won’t quit until it becomes a reality. She is known for her ability to galvanize support on the local, regional and national levels.”

In 1975, Mrs. Shepherd, her husband Harold, and her son James co-founded Shepherd Center after the family learned about the lack of high-quality, specialized rehabilitation care in the Southeast. James sustained a spinal cord injury in 1973 and had to travel to halfway across the United States to receive specialized rehabilitation care.

Today, Shepherd Center is world-renowned, 132-bed hospital specializing in medical treatment, research and rehabilitation for people with spinal cord injury and brain injury.

Mrs. Shepherd is one of the center’s chief fundraisers and volunteers. She is active at Shepherd Center almost every day, leading tours for potential donors and visiting patients and their families to encourage