COLUMBIA, S.C. - From the earliest days of his career in medicine, J. Benjamin Jackson III, MD, MBA, CPE, viewed the American Orthopedic Association’s (AOA) American-British-Canadian (ABC) Traveling Fellowship as a goal worth pursuing.
Now, Dr. Jackson, an orthopedic surgeon with Prisma Health and Lunceford – Moore Distinguished Professor of Orthopedic Research at the Floyd School of Medicine, has been selected as one of five U.S. surgeons for the 2027 fellowship. The position will take him to South Africa and the United Kingdom for five weeks of lectures, clinical observation and collaboration with orthopedic leaders around the world.
Established in 1948, the highly competitive ABC Traveling Fellowship is the oldest of the AOA’s traveling fellowships. It brings together rising orthopedic surgeons from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to share research, discuss advances in care, and build international professional relationships. The fellowship selects from orthopedic surgeons who are within their first 12 years of practice.
From that national pool, the organization selects around 10 applicants for an interview and ultimately pick five, plus two alternates. Jackson was selected for an interview during the last cycle before his selection this fall.
“Candidly, it’s been a career goal of mine for about 17 years,” Jackson said. “To be selected this time was a real honor and honestly a dream come true!”
"Dr. Jackson established a career trajectory for himself that demanded excellence in clinical care, education and teaching," Christopher Mazoue, M.D., Professor and Chair of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery said. "He has tremendous passion for caring for patients today and performing research to make sure we are providing the very best care for our patients in the future. We are proud to have one of our own represent the Unites States in this traveling fellowship."
During the fellowship, Jackson will give lectures, observe clinical practice and learn alongside colleagues from leading institutions. The experience is designed not simply as a recognition of past achievement, but as an investment in the future of the specialty.
“The goal was to exchange information,” Jackson explained. “You send us your country’s best, we’ll send you our country’s best, so we can learn what the other is doing and make care better for patients. People I know personally who have done amazing things in orthopedics have said, ‘This will change your life.’”
Jackson expects the fellowship to strengthen all three components of academic orthopedics: patient care, research, and education.
“I hope this can help me in all three of those areas,” he said. “I’m looking forward to hearing from my colleagues about how they’re doing things that are innovative in foot and ankle surgery that maybe I don’t even know about.”
“The ABC Traveling Fellowship offers Dr. Jackson an exceptional opportunity to train with and learn from some of the world’s leading orthopedic surgeons. He’ll bring valuable insights from this experience back to South Carolina, enriching both his collaborations with colleagues and the education of our Floyd School of Medicine community. We congratulate him on this well-deserved honor.”
Jamie P. Dwyer, M.D. | Dean of the Kay and C. Edward Floyd, M.D. School of Medicine
Jackson also plans to examine how other countries organize healthcare delivery and maintain professional standards for surgeons.
While the fellowship will offer a new global perspective, Jackson credits the support he has received at “home” with the Floyd School of Medicine and from his colleagues for making the opportunity possible. When he joined the faculty, he was the first orthopedic surgeon hired specifically to conduct research. Since then, the department has built a research team that includes doctoral researchers, a postdoctoral fellow and research coordinators; produces 20 to 25 papers annually, and has secured millions of dollars in federal funding.