Dr. Kales became the Director of the Occupational & Environmental Medicine Residency in July 2006. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Preventive Medicine: Occupational Medicine, and has been elected to Fellowship by both the American College of Physicians and by the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine.

Dr. Kales has participated in a wide range of research, advisory, and teaching activities on five continents resulting in over 95 publications. His primary research has focused on firefighters. Further studies have sought to identify risk factors for adverse health and employment outcomes, and heart disease in particular. His group’s work is influencing medical standards for firefighter’s fitness for duty, the need for improved wellness programs, and methods for determining the causal relationship of heart disease among firefighters to their job activities and other factors.

Dr. Kales’ research on firefighters has received Massachusetts, Federal, and Canadian funding. Other collaborations focus on cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors and their evolution over time, including a cohort study of young adults in Cyprus funded by the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus. Additional research areas have included carbon monoxide exposure, chemical terrorism and chemical emergencies, and heavy metals. One particular area, related to lead exposure from traditional Indian medications, has had wide impact, triggering changes in the regulation of these medications by the Indian and Canadian governments and spurring various American health departments to scrutinize the sale of these folk remedies.

Dr. Kales is on the editorial boards of Environmental Health Perspectives and the Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health. He is an occupational medicine consultant to the Massachusetts/Rhode Island Poison Control Center, served for several years as the medical consultant to Massachusetts’ Adult Lead Registry, and worked with the state’s regional hazardous materials teams for 10 years.

BS, 1985 Bucknell University
MD, 1989 Harvard Medical School
MPH, 1992 Harvard School of Public Health