Danny O. Jacobs, MD, MPH

Danny O. Jacobs, MD, MPH, joined Duke University Medical Center as professor and chair of the Department of Surgery in February 2003. A specialist in gastrointestinal surgery, Jacobs is a highly regarded teacher and researcher.

Jacobs received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and earned his MD degree from Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine in 1979. After completing a residency and fellowship in surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Jacobs returned to Harvard as a research fellow in surgery in 1986. He stayed there for 14 years, rising to assistant professor of surgery and then associate professor. He also earned a MPH degree from Harvard’s School of Public Health and served as associate program director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s (BWH) Clinical Research Center, chief of BWH’s Metabolic service, and director of the Laboratory for Surgical Metabolism and Nutrition.

Jacobs left Harvard in 2000 to join the faculty at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, where he served as the Arnold W. Lempka Distinguished Professor of Surgery and chairman of the surgery department. He stayed at Creighton until coming to Duke.

Jacobs’s research focuses on the effects of critical illness and malnutrition on cellular bioenergetics and organ function and metabolism. His clinical interest is treating patients with nutritional or metabolic diseases that are amenable to surgical treatment including patients with intestinal fistulas and morbid obesity.

A prolific writer, Jacobs serves on the editorial boards of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, Surgery, and Archives of Surgery. He also is a member of numerous honorific and academic societies including the American College of Surgeons, Society of University Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, the American Physiological Society, American Surgical Association, the Society of Surgical Chairs, Society of Black Academic Surgeons, Western Surgical Association, Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons, Society of Critical Care Medicine, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.