Rosa Maria Jorba, senior lecturer in the Universitat Rovira i Virgili’s Department of Medicine and Surgery and clinical director of General and Digestive Surgery at Joan XXIII University Hospital, has been named an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), the largest professional organisation of surgeons in the world. It is one of the highest honours the College awards. Jorba is the first woman from Spain to receive it, and only the ninth person from the country.<\/p>\n
The Honorary Fellowship was awarded on Saturday 26 September at the ceremony held just before the opening of the ACS Clinical Congress 2026 in Washington, D.C. This year, the College named eight surgeons from around the world Honorary Fellows, selected for their careers, leadership and international reputation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m absolutely thrilled to receive this honour, but I also see it as recognition of all the work we’ve done over the years. It makes me especially proud to put Joan XXIII Hospital and Tarragona on the map at the American College of Surgeons. Today, a little bit of Tarragona is here too\u201d, said Jorba.<\/p>\n
The American College of Surgeons describes Rosa Jorba as a gastrointestinal surgeon, a distinguished academic and a leader in surgery. She is the first woman from Spain to join the College’s Honorary Fellows. Until now, the honour had gone to eight surgeons from Spain, all of them men.<\/p>\n
The College has awarded Honorary Fellowships since it was founded in 1913. It has nearly 95,000 members and bestows the honour on surgeons and physicians who practise mainly outside the United States. To be considered, these professionals must have built an international reputation in surgery or medicine, or made an outstanding humanitarian contribution.<\/p>\n
Rosa Jorba has been a senior lecturer in the URV’s Department of Medicine and Surgery since 2024. She teaches at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, where she had been an adjunct lecturer since 2014. As clinical director of General and Digestive Surgery at Joan XXIII Hospital, she has strengthened both patient care and research in the unit, introduced new surgical technologies and encouraged the unit’s involvement in national and international multicentre studies.<\/p>\n
She also leads the General and Digestive Surgery Research Group (RECERCGAD), which is affiliated with Joan XXIII Hospital and the Southern Catalonia Biomedical Research Institute (IRB CatSud). She was president of the Catalan Society of Surgery from 2021 to 2025, and since 2023 she has been a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jorba, who teaches in the URV’s Department of Medicine and Surgery and is clinical director of General and Digestive Surgery at Joan XXIII Hospital, is the ninth person from Spain to be honoured by the world’s largest association of surgeons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":158183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3492,790,82,236,818,796,196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medicine-surgery","category-faculty-medicine","category-general-en","category-health","category-press-releases","category-pdi-en","category-international"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}