For Jackson, It’s Teach and Treat

For Jackson, It’s Teach and Treat

Richard Jackson surrounded by his African physical therapy students.

Courtesy photo

By Leonard Shapiro

For Richard Jackson, it began with Peace Corps service more than four decades ago and his 1977 posting to Kenya. He had finished his training as a physical therapist at the Ithaca College/Albert Einstein School of Medicine and soon was sharing his expertise by teaching at the Kenya Medical Training College.

“The Peace Corps was probably where the idea of helping people came from,” said Jackson, a longtime Middleburg resident who started his practice here and now, with his wife Anna, has grown it to 21 clinics located in Northern Virginia and Maryland.

“Anna and I are both believers that it’s important in life to help other people and improve the world around you,” Jackson said in a recent interview.

The Jacksons have funded The Jackson Clinics Foundation, a non-profit that over the last ten years has educated and trained physical therapy students in Kenya, Ethiopia and most recently Mozambique.

The foundation’s motto: “Teach One, Treat Many.”

Over the years, Jackson has taught over 400 classes, many of them in Africa. The foundation, including many volunteers now employed by the Jackson Clinics, has helped train hundreds of physical therapist in countries where, in sone cases, there were none.

“We started in 2010 in Ethiopia,” Jackson said.”Over a seven-year period, we launched the first doctoral program in physical therapy on the African continent. Our doctors of physical therapy are unique in the world. They set fractures, suture wounds, give injections, write prescriptions and order and read X-rays. Most doctors of physical therapy in other places don’t do that, but there really was a need in Ethiopia.”

In 2012, Jackson started a graduate program in orthopedic manual therapy in Kenya and turned it over to the government last year after graduating 180 students. In 2019, he launched the first women’s health program in East Africa, in Nairobi. COVID has temporarily put a hold on the program, but it will resume when the pandemic has eased.

“Women’s health in Africa, especially pelvic health problems, are really under-served there,” Jackson said. “Physical therapy can do a tremendous amount of good for women, and that was pretty much unknown when we first started the program."

In Juy, 2019, Jackson was asked to start physical therapy training in Mozambique.

“They have none,” he said. “That is just an astonishing statement. We’re talking about helping treat strokes, amputees, everything. Before, they basically were sent home to die.” At the invitation of the Mozambique government, the foundation has begun a four-year bachelor of science program in physical therapy. They launched it with about 40 students, with many more to come.

The Jacksons mostly fund the foundation, with many employees and other college instructors volunteering to help teach and offer practical clinical advice for two weeks at a time. The foundation pays their expenses and welcomes outside grants or donations and help from foreign governments.

Because of the pandemic, many students have been forced to drop out of programs because they could not afford the modest tuition that is used to pay for volunteer teachers accommodations. Over the last two months, $30,000 has been raised, much of it contributed by some of their U.S. instructors who, because of the pandemic, are also teaching virtually.

Jackson is a native of upstate New York in a town called Mexico not far from Syracuse. He likes to tell people Mexico is only five mies away from Texas, N.Y., and Phoenix, N.Y. is not that far either.

Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique, of course, are halfway around the world, and Jackson is obviously proud of the work he and his colleagues have done to train hundreds in programs that will continue to grow.

“As physical therapists, we spend all day helping people,” he said. “When you have the means to help, that’s what you do. I’ve always felt I could reach more patients by teaching. I know I’m reaching thousands of people because of what we’re doing. To me, that’s what this is all about.”

To donate toward student tuition, go to www.teachandtreat.org