During the 59th SRS Annual Meeting in Barcelona, Spain, the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) announced Richard M. Hodes, MD as the Walter P. Blount Humanitarian award winner.
The Walter P. Blount Award is given to an individual who has provided outstanding service for those with spinal deformities, through their generous actions out of a sense of service to larger social and professional goals.
Dr. Hodes is an American physician who has lived and worked in Ethiopia for over 35 years. Rick is an internist who never did an orthopedics or neurosurgery rotation and had no interest in spine. In 1999, he met two abandoned orphans with severe Pott’s Disease at Mother Teresa’s Mission in Addis Ababa. He adopted them and brought them to Texas for surgery.
He started a spine practice in 2006, partnering with Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei and FOCOS. That year he had 20 new deformity patients, with 11 operations at FOCOS in Ghana. Since then they have done more than 1600 surgeries, including 50 surgeries May through June, 2024, in Ethiopia with SRS partners from Dallas, Stanford, Phoenix, and Lithuania.
He practices in the basement of a crowded Addis Ababa hospital, concentrating on spinal deformities. All care is free. Last year he had more than 500 new deformity patients from Ethiopia and neighboring countries. Patients cross the border from Eritrea and travel by bus for days to reach his spine clinic.
He is the subject of the HBO documentary “Making the Crooked Straight,” as well as the book “This is a Soul: The Mission of Rick Hodes” by Marilyn Berger. Read more about Dr. Hodes on www.srs.org/AM24.
About Scoliosis Research Society
The Scoliosis Research Society is a non-profit, professional organization, made up of physicians and allied health personnel. Our primary focus is on providing continuing medical education for health care professionals and on funding/supporting research in spinal deformities. Founded in 1966, SRS has gained recognition as the world's premier spine deformity society. Please visit www.srs.org for further information. Also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.