New Chief of Addiction Medicine

AUGUSTA, GA (PR) – Dr. William S. Jacobs, Associate Professor and Chief of Interventional Pain Management at the University of Florida College of Medicine, has been named Chief of Addiction Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University.


Jacobs, an MCG alumnus, is board certified in Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine and Addiction Medicine, and served as a consultant for the Florida Office of Drug Control, the United States Senate Crime and Drugs Subcommittee, and the U.S. Department of Labor. He has testified on Capitol Hill on MDMA – commonly known as ecstacy – and prescription misuse and abuse and has testified and consulted for the Drug Enforcement Agency on safe prescribing of narcotic drugs and the model of ideal treatment programs. Jacobs is a national forensic expert in addiction caused by medical treatment, accidental overdose, injury and death, as well as tobacco.

“We are eager to welcome Dr. Jacobs back to Augusta and to the Medical College of Georgia,” said Dr. Vaughn McCall, Professor and Case Distinguished Chairman of the MCG Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior. “His experience and expertise in treating people who are in the grips of addiction will be an asset to the department and will create valuable training opportunities for our students and residents.”

Jacobs founded NexStep Integrated Pain Care, Inc., a model program for the treatment of patients with both chronic pain and addiction disorders in Jacksonville, Fla. Over his career, Jacobs has been medical director in a variety of clinical settings, including residential, partial hospitalization, hospital, and intensive outpatient programs. He has served as Medical Director or Chief Medical Officer at clinics such as Gateway Community and Rehabilitation Services, Wekiva Springs Psychiatric Hospital, Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Healthcare, Lakeview Health, and Nancy Reagan TPC Village. He has served as an attending physician at the UF Health Vista West Dual Diagnosis Unit and the River Region Methadone Maintenance Program.

He was a co-principal investigator for Florida sites in the pivotal trials examining the effects of Zyban as a smoking cessation aid. Jacobs has been a monitoring physician for the Florida Board of Medicine and an evaluator and treatment provider for the Florida Professionals Resource Network, Intervention Project for Nurses, and Florida Lawyers Assistance Program.

Jacobs is a member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the National Association of Drug Court Professionals. A Georgia native, he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1977 from the University of Georgia and graduated from MCG in 1981. He went on to complete an anesthesiology residency at the University of Alabama in 1984 and postdoctoral training in Addiction Medicine at the University of Florida in 1999.