Barsley Appointed to North Oaks Health System's Board of Commissioners

The Tangipahoa Parish Council appointed long-time Ponchatoula resident, Robert E. Barsley, DDS, JD, to the North Oaks Health System Board of Commissioners for a 6-year term in December 2015.

Barsley fills the post vacated by retired educator A.J. Bodker of Ponchatoula in February 2016.

“I have been an interested observer of North Oaks Health System for many years,” Barsley shares. “About 15 years ago, I was fortunate to be able to spend a year in Washington, DC, as a Robert Wood Johnson Congressional Health Policy Fellow, which provided me with a broad foundation in health care policy in this country.”

A renowned and well-published expert consultant and sought-after lecturer in the field of forensics, Barsley has been a Professor and Division Head at the LSUHSC School of Dentistry in New Orleans since 1982. In addition, he serves as Director of Hospital and Community Dentistry for the LSUHSC Department of Oral Health Services. Prior to joining the LSUHSC faculty, he operated a private dental practice in Ponchatoula for 5 years.

In the recovery phases of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Barsley supervised teams of dentists charged with the sensitive and detailed process of identifying victims of each storm. With his leadership, positive identifications were achieved for most cases. In 1983, he was instrumental in the identification of victims of the Pan Am Flight 759 crash in Kenner. He is a Deputy Coroner in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes and consultant for others across the region, including that of Tangipahoa Parish.

Locally, he belongs to the Ponchatoula Rotary Club and Ponchatoula Chamber of Commerce for which he served as president in the early 1980s. From 2004-2012, he was a Magistrate for the City of Ponchatoula Mayor's Court, and from 1981-1993, he served in the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office Deputy Reserves.

Barsley currently serves as the President-elect for the Louisiana Dental Association. In 2010, he became Co-Chair of the Odontology Section of the SWGDVI (Scientific Working Group: Disaster Victim Identification) and is now the chair of the successor of the SWG—the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Sub-committee on Forensic Odontology. From 1995-2009, he was Chief Dental Consultant for the Louisiana Dental Medicaid Program. He served on Governor Kathleen Blanco's Health Care Commission from 2004-2008 and with the Louisiana Department of Insurance Healthcare Commission from 2008-2015.

He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Odontology and American Board of Oral Medicine, as well as a Fellow of the American College of Dentists, International College of Dentists and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences through which he received the Reidar Sognnaes Award for Excellence in Forensic Dentistry.

Barsley attended Rhodes College in Memphis and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He graduated from the LSUHSC School of Dentistry in New Orleans and from the Loyola University School of Law, also in New Orleans.