Management Team

Robert C. Bailey, PhD, MPH
Secretary of the Board
Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago

Robert Bailey is Secretary of the Board of Directors of NRHS and Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), a Research Associate at the Field Museum in Chicago, and Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.  Robert holds a PhD in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University and an MPH in Epidemiology from Emory University.  From 1984 until 1994, he taught Biological Anthropology at University of California Los Angeles.
He then worked for two years in the Division of HIV/AIDS at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and he joined the faculty at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 1996.  Prof. Bailey’s research and public health efforts have focused primarily on issues of human health in Africa and has included investigations of demography, growth and nutrition of Efe Pygmies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, prevention of maternal to child transmission of HIV in Ivory Coast and Thailand, risk factors for sexually transmitted infections and HIV in the Congo, Uganda and Kenya,  support for people living with HIV/AIDS, and risk factors for HIV in men who have sex with men in Kenya.  He was the Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded randomized controlled trial of male circumcision for HIV prevention in Kisumu with NRHS as the key Kenyan organization.  He has supervised studies in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Dominican Republic into acceptability and feasibility of introducing circumcision for HIV/STD prevention and reproductive health.  He has served on the Board of NRHS since its inception in 2002 and has collaborated with NRHS and FHI 360, the U.S. Government under CDC-PEPFAR, and the Kenyan Ministry of Health to provide a comprehensive package of HIV prevention services including male circumcision in western Kenya and to conduct operational research in conjunction with those interventions.  He is currently the P.I. for a study integrating infant male circumcision with community health in western Kenya with NRHS as the implementing partner, and is a co-investigator on most NRHS projects.  Bailey is Co-Director of the Chicago Developmental Center for AIDS Research, and he collaborates with investigators and policy makers from numerous countries and institutions around the world.  Author or co-author of six books and over 100 publications, Prof. Bailey consults on matters relating to national and international health and infectious disease prevention for the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UNICEF, USAID, CDC, and others.