More than 750 children with cleft lips, cleft palates, and other facial differences have undergone surgery performed by Dr. Andrew Jacono, work carried out largely through his partnership with the organization Healing the Children. The number reflects decades of volunteer surgical missions that run alongside his private practice in Manhattan and Great Neck, New York, and it traces back to a single memory from his own childhood.

Where the Commitment Began

As a boy, Dr. Andrew Jacono sat next to a classmate born with a cleft lip and palate on his school bus, watching classmates tease her and keep their distance. After she received reconstructive surgery, the same classmates began treating her differently, accepting her in a way they had not before. That early le Dr. Andrew Jacono: A Leading Voice in Facial Plastic Surgery and Reconstructive Proceduressson in what facial reconstruction can do for a person’s social world stayed with him through medical school and residency.

Domestic Violence Reconstruction Work

The humanitarian work has not stopped at cleft palate repair. Dr. Jacono has also provided reconstructive surgery to more than 100 survivors of domestic violence through the FACE TO FACE program, an effort chronicled in the television series Facing Trauma on the Oprah Winfrey Network. The program pairs facial plastic surgeons with survivors whose injuries left lasting physical reminders of abuse, offering reconstructive procedures at no cost.

This body of volunteer work has not gone unnoticed within the medical community. Dr. Andrew Jacono has received the Most Compassionate Doctor Award every year from 2012 to 2022, an honor given to fewer than 3 percent of physicians nationally. His surgical training, which includes a medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a residency at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, underpins both his cosmetic practice and his volunteer surgeries. Few surgeons split their careers so evenly between paying patients and children who would otherwise go without treatment, and that balance appears to be the point rather than a side project. Visit this page for more information.

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