Dr. Kelly Baker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, with a secondary appointment in Epidemiology, at the University of Iowa College of Public Health.
- Dr. Baker received her PhD in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Maryland. She remained at the University of Maryland as a T32 training grant-supported postdoctoral fellow to work on the Global Enteric Multi-center Study (GEMS) and gain experience in global environmental epidemiology of pediatric diarrhea.. She was a visiting graduate student at the University of Santiago, Chile, starting her focus in Global Health.
- Her research interests include:
- Development of improved field and laboratory environmental exposure assessment tools for evaluating health risks from fecally-transmitted diseases.
- Ecology of water, sanitation, and hygiene disease transmission.
- Life course epidemiology of WASH-related disease burden on maternal and child health, gender disparities.
- Her current studies explore the health effects of poor water and sanitation on maternal and child health, and also how environmental and social factors contribute to health risks.
- Dr. Baker served as a Research Assistant Professor in Environmental Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
- She was recruited to Iowa as a part of the University’s cluster hire initiative in Water Sustainability.
- Her lab is currently developing a sensitive environmental microbiology tool that can detect and quantify 23 globally common fecally-transmitted pathogens in water, sewage and soil samples to improve the quality of information available for ecological disease transmission models.
For more information on the research Dr. Baker has worked on and is currently working on, see her researchgate.net profile page here.
Contact Dr. Kelly Baker
Email: kelly-k-baker@uiowa.edu
Phone: (319) 384-4008