Robert Haley

Gulf War Syndrome:  Brain Research in a Political Context

Robert W. Haley, M.D., is Professor of Internal Medicine and and Director of the Division of Epidemiology in the Internal Medicine Department at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and holder of the U.S. Armed Forces Veterans Distinguished Chair for Medical Research Honoring America’s Gulf War Veterans. He received his M.D. degree from UT Southwestern School and served a residency in internal medicine at Dallas Parkland Memorial Hospital. He spent 10 years at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he investigated epidemics and performed epidemiologic research in nationwide samples of U.S. hospitals. In 1983, Dr. Haley founded the Division of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at UT Southwestern. He was an attending physician at the Dallas VA Medical Center for 10 years (1985-1995) and has been an attending physician at Parkland since then. Dr. Haley has conducted extensive research on the epidemiology and prevention of hospital-acquired infections, hepatitis C and Gulf War Syndrome. His most recent research, beginning in 1994 and funded initially by the Perot Foundation, has been to understand the nature and causes of the Gulf War symdrome in veterans of the Persian Gulf War.