“It’s easy to be stuck up downtown in a tall building, but I wanted to be based in the community around people who look like me,” said Dr. Kenneth Jones. That’s the reason Dr. Jones, Jacksonville noted surgeon made the choice to relocate from his office at the downtown St. Vincent Building to 1004 Edgewood Avenue. He wants to be more accessible to African American families. Moreover, he is committed to offering himself as a role model for African American boys and girls. He desire is to have them know that they don’t have to see their dreams come crashing down around them when they discover the disappointing odds of becoming a professional athlete or actor/actress. His message to African American boys and girls is that dedication and hard work in their academic endeavors yield a far better guarantee of success as a professional

Dr. Jones migrated to the United States in 1968 from his homeland in British Guyana, South America. After completing high school in New York City, he enrolled at Cornell University and later at Cornell Medical School where he studied neural physiology. Upon completing requirements for his medical degree, he studied surgery at New York University and transplantation at St. Barnabus Medical Center.

In 1983, Dr. Jones opened his practice in Jacksonville in general surgery and transplantation. Today, as a transplantation surgeon at Shands Jacksonville, he is widely known for a kidney transplant technique, which he perfected and initially performed in 1982.

He stated, “If a person is going to make such a sacrifice [donating a kidney], that person should not have to suffer.” With that thought in mind, Dr. Jones set out to find a better way of kidney transplantation. He spent hours of practice at the cadaver laboratory to perfect a less traumatic and invasive method so that this procedure would not require the removal of a rib. His dedication to making this transplantation more comfortable for his patients resulted in a procedure called anterior retro peritoneal living donor nephroctomy, which reduced the time for a kidney transplantation from seven and a half hours to just two and a half hours.

Dr. Jones’ work in kidney transplantation has been lauded around the globe. He has been invited to numerous hospitals to present his procedure to other surgeons. Likewise, he has performed surgery on patients from other countries including the Cayman Islands and in African nations. At the time of his October 2001 interview, he was the only African American transplant surgeon in the State of Florida and one of only a few in the entire country. Since a kidney is commonly acquired from a spouse, or from a member of the immediate family, he says he does not find it difficult securing donors.

Dr. Jones’ work in the community is just as intense as it is in the medical arena. Just as one is gearing up to learn more about his medical practice, he breaks out with his concern for academics and the African American child’s lack of performance on standardized tests. “I want to be an example for the African American male and female too…. When I retire, I would like to see 10 or 15 more African American surgeons coming down the pike.”