Robert Haley, MD, is an associate professor of internal medicine and chief of the epidemiology division in the department of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW) in Dallas.
After graduating from medical school and serving a residency in internal medicine at Dallas Parkland Memorial Hospital, Haley served for 10 years (1973-1983) at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, as a medical epidemiologist in the Epidemic Intelligence Service and then as a division director. There, he completed a second residency in preventive medicine and received the U.S. Public Health Service's Commissioned Officer Commendation Medal for his research accomplishments. This work was recently recognized as being among the four greatest research accomplishments of CDC in its first 50 years.
Since joining the faculty of UTSW in 1983, Haley has served as an attending physician at the Dallas Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and at Parkland Memorial Hospital, has conducted epidemiological and clinical research on infectious diseases, has published over 100 papers and abstracts in scientific journals, has served as an editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, has become a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American College of Epidemiology, has served on diverse federal, state, and private advisory committees, has become a board member of the Dallas County Medical Society, and has been listed in Naifeh and Smith's book of The Best Doctors in America.
His research at CDC and during his early years at UTSW involved defining the epidemiology of hospital-acquired infections. He conducted landmark studies of hospitals nationwide, demonstrating which measures are effective in reducing nosocomial infection rates, known as the SENIC Project. He has lectured on the subject throughout the nation and the world, has taught in a CDC-sponsored course for physicians, and has served on national advisory committees for the JCAHO on hospital accreditation and for the CDC in making recommendations to hospitals on isolation practices, infection control practices, and such problems as multi-resistant pathogens.
Since early 1994, Haley has devoted his research efforts to understanding the epidemic of neurologic illness afflicting Gulf War veterans, supported by grants from the Perot Foundation and more recently by the Department of Defense. In this work, he has published landmark articles in JAMA and top epidemiology journals identifying new syndromes and linking them to neurologic damage and risk factors of wartime chemical exposure. Haley is currently completing a multimillion dollar clinical case-control study to identify neurophysiologic and brain imaging tests for the brain damage in Gulf War veterans, a clinical trial of treatments for Gulf War neurologic syndrome, development of a rat model of minimal brain damage from organophosphate chemical combinations, genetic studies to find predisposing factors, development of a rapid diagnostic test, and other related studies.