A Century of Public Health Service

Honoring Professors Tim and Sue Baker

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is celebrating the distinguished careers of professors Tim and Susan Baker.

Susan Baker, MPH, a professor in Health Policy and Management, is a pioneering injury prevention researcher, epidemiologist and educator. The founder and first director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, she has played a pivotal role for more than four decades in establishing injury prevention and control as a scientific discipline.

Baker’s work has been central to the creation of laws and policies to improve the safety of children in cars, teenage drivers, airplane pilots, truck drivers, motorcyclists and pedestrians. She has also worked to reduce poisonings, falls, drowning, suicide and homicide.

In 2010, Baker, a licensed airplane pilot, was awarded the Frank A. Calderone Prize by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She is the first injury control researcher to receive the prestigious prize. She was recognized for her transformational work in bringing the prevention of injuries to the forefront of public health and public policy.

Timothy Baker, MD, MPH, a professor in International Health, joined the School as a faculty member in the Department of Public Health Administration and as an assistant dean. In 1961, he founded the School’s Division of International Health and served as acting director. Over the next five years, he was instrumental in building the Division into the Department of International Health. Baker’s fundamental contributions to the Department include faculty recruitment, curriculum development, student mentoring and fundraising. He was instrumental in establishing one of the School’s first endowed professorships—the Edgar Berman Professorship in International Health.

In more than 50 years as a researcher and consultant, Baker—who holds joint appointments in Health Policy and Management and Environmental Health Sciences—worked in over 40 countries, focusing on health services and assessment of disease and injury burden. He also held leadership positions in several international public health agencies.

A portrait honoring Bakers was unveiled during a ceremony in their honor at the Bloomberg School on April 12.

Tim and Sue Baker recount how they both started in public health.

Media contact: Tim Parsons, director of Public Affairs, at 410-955-7619 or  tmparson@jhsph.edu.