Dr. Kenneth Waxman MD

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Get to know General Surgeon Dr. Kenneth Waxman, who serves patients in Santa Barbara, California.

Dr. Waxman is a California general/trauma surgeon, with a teaching and academic background, who now focuses upon international work. 

He is the Founder & Director of Future Doctors for South Sudan (FDSS), a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting medical school and postgraduate medical education for South Sudanese medical students. He also travels internationally with his work with Joint Commission International, and serves as a member of the Board of Directors for The Sansum Diabetes Research Institute.

With a broad educational background, Dr. Waxman graduated with his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. He then went on to earn his medical degree from the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago in 1975. 

Furthering his training, he performed his residency in surgery at Los Angeles County-Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in 1981.

A Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS), the doctor is board-certified in general surgery and surgical critical care by the American Board of Surgery (ABS). The ABS is an independent, non-profit organization located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded for the purpose of certifying surgeons who have met a defined standard of education, training and knowledge. 

From 1981 until 1995, Dr. Waxman served as a professor of surgery at the University of California, Irvikne. Then, from 1995 until 2010, he served as program director of surgery at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

In 2010, Dr. Waxman traveled to South Sudan as a volunteer for Doctors without Borders. There, he became impressed with the devastating lack of healthcare and the enormous need to educate and train South Sudanese physicians. In South Sudan, he also had the good fortune to meet and work with Malueth, an amazing young man who is attempting to overcome overwhelming obstacles to attend medical school in order to serve his community. Malueth inspired Dr. Waxman to establish FDSS to help Malueth and others like him to become the physician leaders that South Sudan so desperately needs.

General surgery is a surgical specialty that focuses on abdominal contents including the esophagus, stomach, small bowel, colon, liver, pancreas, gallbladder, appendix and bile ducts, and often the thyroid gland. A general surgeon performs a wide range of abdominal surgeries for many forms of intestinal and abdominal wall neoplasms, gallbladder disease, gastric and pancreatic disease. They follow the patient through critical care and surgical recovery all the way to outpatient care. 

A resident of Santa Barbara, California, Dr. Waxman has conducted multiple publications, including over 150 original peer-reviewed research articles and numerous chapters in medical texts. He has also published a book about South Sudan titled Ajak’s Song (available for purchase on Amazon – 100% of the proceeds benefit Malueth and the other students FDSS is supporting through their medical education). 

Among his various accolades include Patients’ Choice Award (2011, 2010, 2009, 2008), On-Time Doctor Award (2009), and Compassionate Doctor Recognition (2011, 2010, 2009).

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