He is a Board-certified Orthopaedic Surgeon and licensed to practice Orthopaedics in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, Delaware and Hawaii. Dr. Vaccaro holds numerous Society memberships including the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the Philadelphia College of Surgeons, the Cervical Spine Research Society, the North American Spine Society, the Scoliosis Research Society, the American Orthopaedic Association, and the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine. He was asked to be the only Orthopaedic surgeon reviewer for the Journal of Neurosurgery Spine and is a member of the American Association of Neurologic Surgeons (AANS). He has done extensive research on a broad range of topics related to disorders of the spine and has over 360 peer reviewed and over 150 non-peer reviewed publications. He has published over 200 book chapters and is the editor of over 27 textbooks and co-editor of OKU-Spine I and editor of OKU-8. His current research involves the timing of surgery after traumatic spinal cord injury, the use of alternative bone graft substitutes in spinal fusion surgery including recombinant tissue engineering, invasive methods to stabilize osteoporotic compression fractures, and the development of spinal implants for traumatic degenerative disorders of the spine.