David E. Jacobs

David E. Jacobs

PhD, CIH; Chief Scientist

Dr. David Jacobs is the Chief Scientist at the National Center for Healthy Housing. He also serves as Director of the U.S. Collaborating Center for Research and Training on Housing Related Disease and Injury for the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO WHO), an adjunct associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, and as a faculty associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on childhood lead poisoning prevention and was principal author of both the President’s Task Force Report on the subject in 2000 and the Healthy Homes Report to Congress in 1999. He has testified before Congress and other legislative bodies and has authored or coauthored many peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Jacobs is the former director of the Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he was responsible for program evaluations, grants, contracts, public education, enforcement, regulation, and policy related to lead and healthy homes. Dr. Jacobs also serves as a voting member of the ASHRAE 62.2 committee on residential indoor air quality and the Illinois Lead Poisoning Prevention Task Force as well as advising on healthy homes research in Australia and New Zealand. His current work includes research on asthma, international healthy housing guidelines, lead poisoning prevention, and green sustainable building design. Dr. Jacobs is a Certified Industrial Hygienist® and a licensed lead paint risk assessor, and he holds degrees in political science, environmental health, technology, and science policy as well as a doctorate in environmental engineering. In 2022, his book, Fifty Years of Peeling Away the Lead Paint Problem, was published by Elsevier Academic Press. For more than a decade, Dr. Jacobs has also served as volunteer board president of Lincoln Westmoreland Housing, a nonprofit that has provided affordable housing and social services for more than a hundred families in the District of Columbia.