Dr. Jernigan is the Director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research and Policy and a Professor of Medicine and Rural Health at the Center for Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University. She has been the principal investigator for more than a dozen research studies focused on improving Indigenous food systems through policy and environmental interventions. She also directs the Center for Indigenous Innovation and Health Equity, an academic-community partnership with Indigenous peoples to restore traditional foods and food practices to promote healthy diets and reduce chronic disease. In 2011, Dr. Jernigan became the inaugural chair of the National Cancer Institute’s Intervention Research to Improve Native Health initiative, a collaboration of NIH-funded investigators conducting intervention science research. She is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.