To find a good example of international capacity building and training to build local expertise, you don’t have to look any further than the work of Dr. Joshua Abzug.

“Like most physicians, I’ve always wanted to give back,” said Joshua Abzug, MD, Associate Professor at the UM School of Medicine and Director of Pediatric Orthopaedics at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Much of Dr. Abzug’s international work has been through the American Association of Hand Surgery. Six years ago, as Education Committee Chair for the association, Dr. Abzug started a weekly lectureship that would provide a similar education to their faculty and trainees that American hand surgeons receive.

Part of association’s work is Touching Hands, where volunteers travel to Kumasi, Ghana to provide in-depth training for orthopaedic and plastic surgery residents. With lectures and hands-on experiences, the training has grown local expertise.

“After last year, the program was so successful they were able to develop their own fellowship in hand surgery,” Dr. Abzug said. “Now we’ve expanded to other countries.”

The association created partnerships with other countries – including Romania, Egypt, and Italy – where faculty from the United States would travel to the other nation and partner with a similar association. Plans for 2020 travel to Brazil and Australia were cancelled because of COVID-19.

“My work at UMB carries over to helping people around the globe,” Dr. Abzug said.

As President of Faculty Senate, Dr. Abzug played a key role in the Internationalization Process, a two-year-long process where UMB faculty, staff, administrators, and students worked with experts at the American Council of Education to ultimately formulate a strategic action plan to move UMB’s internationalization efforts forward.

“There’s a lot of interest across the faculty in international work. There are a lot who are doing it currently and others who are interested,” Dr. Abzug said.

During that process, the faculty was surveyed to get an idea of what people were doing internationally and Dr. Abzug said he was surprised by the vast number of faculty who are already engaged internationally.

In addition to his international work, Dr. Abzug created Camp Open Arms for children born with limb differences.

“We provide a day camp experience for them to get to know each other and activities they might not want to do otherwise, along with social support for their parents,” Dr. Abzug said.

In 2020, 20 campers participated and there’s been interest in creating a similar experience for children in Egypt.