{"id":9103,"date":"2019-04-11T10:21:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T14:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/?p=9103"},"modified":"2019-04-11T14:55:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T18:55:24","slug":"patrick-kennedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/shg2019\/patrick-kennedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Kennedy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>Undergraduate Commencement Speaker<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy will receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree and will address a crowd of about 15,000 during the University\u2019s main undergraduate commencement ceremony, which begins on Sunday, May 19th, at 12:30 p.m., on the Quadrangle of the Kingston Campus.<\/p>\n<p>During his 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving Rhode Island\u2019s First Congressional District, Kennedy fought to end discrimination against those with mental illness, addiction, and other brain diseases. He is best known as the lead sponsor of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which requires insurers to cover treatment for mental health and substance use disorders no more restrictively than treatment for illnesses of the body, such as diabetes and cancer.<\/p>\n<p>See the full <a href=\"https:\/\/today.uri.edu\/news\/commencement-2019-former-congressman-patrick-j-kennedy-to-address-uri-graduates-may-19\/\">press release<\/a> announcing Kennedy as the 2019 commencement speaker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><em>Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>Undergraduate Commencement Speaker<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, who led the fight for health insurance parity for those with mental health and substance use disorders, will be the speaker at the University of Rhode Island\u2019s 133rd Commencement, Sunday, May 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":581,"featured_media":9112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shg2019"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/581"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9103"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9337,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103\/revisions\/9337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}