Uwe Jacobs, Ph.D.

Over the years, he has recruited and helped train an entire cadre of clinicians to work with torture survivors. In his supervisory work with these clinicians, he has shown extraordinary availability and patience, communicating a respect for the dilemmas those who do our kind of work will sometimes find themselves in, and for the difficulties our clients experience in the strange world they have found themselves, thousands of miles away from the scene of their trauma, and yet living it every day and trying to simply survive. Colleague

Community Health Leaders
2009

Area of Expertise:
Psychological Counseling

Leader's Biography 2009:
Uwe Jacobs, Ph.D., is the clinical and executive director of Survivors International, in San Francisco, California. He has provided therapeutic care to more than 1,000 individuals who have experienced torture. He is also a leader in efforts to officially recognize and define gender-based violence as torture. Through his work with a wide array of people from different nations and backgrounds, and with victims of genocide from around the world, Jacobs realized that a lot of the people who were being persecuted were victims of domestic violence, female genital mutilation, sex trafficking and the threat of “honor killings.” Seeing the tremendous need, he developed alliances of health professionals to provide services to victims of gender-based violence. His work has demonstrated that survivors of gender-based violence have levels of trauma that are comparable to those of most torture victims. Jacobs has established a partnership with the San Francisco Bar Association to provide pro bono services to assist torture victims in gaining asylum in the United States.

Where this Leader can be reached today:
Executive Director/Clinical Director
Survivors International
703 Market Street, Suite 301
San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone: (415) 546-2080
Fax: (415) 546-2084
E-mail: uwejacobs@survivorsintl.org
Website: www.survivorsintl.org