Joe Baker

Joe Baker is a health researcher experienced in research and data collection, with expertise in traumatic stress and trauma-informed care, community-based participatory research, mixed-methods, and technical assistance. His research focuses on evidence-based treatment practices, patients’ and consumers’ perspectives, and advancing the opportunity for diverse communities to provide their voice to research. He is also a practicing counselor for a community-based organization; in that role, he provides person-centered and trauma-informed mental health and substance use treatment to individuals and families.

Throughout his career, Baker has engaged study participants from diverse backgrounds on research projects, including recruiting Tribal communities to add their voice to research; conducting cognitive interviews and focus groups with health beneficiaries and practitioners; and providing technical assistance to community programs, health care organizations, and states. Currently, he is analyzing innovative approaches to address the economic and workforce-related impacts of the opioid epidemic on states. He led focus groups with individuals in recovery to gain a better understanding of the crisis from their perspective and conducted qualitative interviews with states and partners, including local community organizations, employers, hospitals, and frontline staff. On prior projects, Baker led the successful engagement of Tribal Head Start programs and developed a culturally responsive data collection process as a part of the American Indian and Alaska Native Family and Child Experiences Survey; he also provided recommendations for the Accountable Health Communities screening tool to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services after conducting cognitive interviews of potential model beneficiaries to understand their needs and social determinants of health. Most recently, on the Development and Deployment of a COVID-19 Workforce Readiness Tool project, Baker led the development of a framework and analytic visualization dashboard tool for hospital systems to use to address burnout and distress in the nation’s frontline responders to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Baker is a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC). He holds a master’s degree in community counseling from Rider University and a certificate of advanced training in traumatic stress from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.