Taking Physical Therapy to a World Away

By Leonard Shapiro

It’s a long way from his first physical therapy practice in Laguna Beach, California to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but Richard Jackson’s vision to help patients recover from all manner of medical problems clearly has no geographical boundaries these days, and apparently for many years to come.

Jackson, a doctor of physical therapy (DPT), founded the Jackson Clinics, now based in Middleburg, with 16 locations scattered around Northern Virginia. He has more than 170 employees, including 82 DPTs, and many of them are spreading their knowledge to students in Ethiopia and Kenya, the better to eventually provide better care for the medically under-served citizens of those countries.

A former Peace Corps volunteer in Africa in the late 1970s, Jackson began his first educational foreign forays in 2010. One of his clinic directors, originally from Ethiopia, decided to leave the U.S. and return home in order to educate potential physical therapists in his native land.

Ethiopia, a country of 85 million, has only 250 physical therapists. Jackson and his wife, Anna, a human resources and IT specialist, decided to fund their own foundation to help their colleague improve those numbers.

“We started a physical therapy residency program in Addis Ababa University’s medical school,” Jackson said. “The dean of the medical school asked me to do a curriculum. They didn’t have a physical therapy school. They needed primary care therapists, not just technicians. So we wrote a curriculum that also included pharmacology and radiology. Students were doing trauma, setting fractures, suturing.”

Their first group of 24 students finished training in 2013, and many of Jackson’s employees have been involved in the process. Another group is scheduled to begin in March, and the DPT program there was the first on the African continent. 

Jackson happened to run into one of his former Kenyan students from his Peace Corps days. Not long after, the Jacksons went to Nairobi “because I was a known quantity, we were able to get things done right away. We started a program in orthopedic manual therapy. Every month since 2013 we send a university professor and a member of our staff for two weeks six times a year. Southern Cal is there now. Duke has sent people. The program is 1 1/2 years and there are 20 students in each class. It’s been very successful.”

One of their graduates was working at a refugee camp at the Somali border

several years years ago. He was walking with friends outside the camp one day when they were stopped by a group of Somali rebels.

“They told them to get down on their knees and they were about to be executed,” Jackson said. “But one of the soldiers stopped them. He recognized Erastus (the therapist) and started tapping his prosthesis. Erastus had once treated him and got him walking again. They let them go.”

The Jacksons would love to expand their educational programs to other countries. They’re now looking at Rwanda, but need more funding. “Anna and I can only do so much,” Jackson said. “Fundraising is not our specialty.” 

But training more DPTs in foreign lands is definitely their forte. Anna recalled attending a graduation ceremony in Nairobi and when one student stood up and paid tribute to their American mentors.

“His name was Henry and he talked about the effect the program had, not just on him, but his colleagues,” Anna Jackson said. “He said they now looked to him and he was no longer afraid about making suggestions to other doctors.”

Richard Jackson also remembered those remarks.

“He said ‘I grew up as a young boy believing that white people (Mzungos they say) were all rich. What I’ve learned is that you are rich in the head and willing to share with us and make us rich, too. I learned that it’s not important what’s in your pocket. It’s what’s in your head that really will make an impact.’”

That impact is obvious at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, where there are now 60 physical therapists, many of them graduates of Jackson’s program. Their outpatient visits have doubled in volume.

“The word is out,” Jackson said. “If you want physiotherapy, this is where you go.” Added Anna Jackson, “if you can make a difference in the whole country,

Holy Cow!!!”