City of San Antonio announces new Metro Health director

CONTACT: Laura Mayes, City of San Antonio (210) 207-1337
[email protected]

Michelle Vigil, City of San Antonio (210) 207-8172
[email protected]

San Antonio (April 16, 2021) - City of San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh today announced the appointment of Claude A. Jacob as the new Director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District (Metro Health). Jacob was selected after a competitive national search.

'I am excited to welcome Claude to San Antonio to serve as the new Director of Metro Health,' said City Manager Erik Walsh, 'I am confident that Claude will provide excellent leadership to Metro Health. He will continue to work to promote health equity and education for our residents. I'd also like to thank Dr. Colleen Bridger for continuing to serve the City during this transition.'

Jacob brings more than 20 years of public health leadership and management experience with an emphasis on operations, program design and service delivery. For the past 14 years, he has served as the Chief Public Health Officer at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In this role, Jacob was responsible for the implementation of innovative programming, attaining national public health accreditation for the Cambridge Public Health Department and mobilizing the COVID-19 emergency response efforts and critical partnerships to cover a population of 118,000 residents in the City of Cambridge.

He previously served in multiple executive leadership roles as the Deputy Director for the Office of Health Promotion at the Illinois Department of Public Health. He is also the past Chief for the Bureau of Disease Prevention & Control at the Baltimore City Health Department, as well as the former Director of Community Affairs for the Sinai Community Institute affiliated with the Sinai Health System in Chicago, Illinois.

'As we have seen over the past year, public health plays a critical role in the day to day lives of every person. San Antonio has a wealth of public health programs, innovative approaches and services available to its residents,' said Jacob. 'I look forward to strengthening and expanding those services in order to address the conditions where all can be healthy in San Antonio.'

Jacob is a past president of the National Association of County & City Health Officials and is a member of the board of directors for the Public Health Accreditation Board. He has completed the certificate training by the National Public Health Leadership Institute and is a certified site visitor for the Council on Education of Public Health. He has a Master of Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jacob is currently a doctoral candidate in health leadership from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.

​Metro Health provides services and access to quality resources to local residents and its mission to protect, preserve and promote the health and well-being of residents, particularly the most vulnerable. As Director, Jacob will oversee more than 30 programs at Metro Health which are grouped into: Communicable Disease, Community Health and Environmental Health and Operations divisions. Jacob's official start date with the City of San Antonio is July 6, 2021.

Assistant City Manager Dr. Colleen Bridger will continue to serve as incident commander of the COVID-19 pandemic response during this transition.

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