Rachel Baker

About

Rachel Baker is the John and Elizabeth Irving Family Assistant Professor of Climate Health and an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Environment and Society at Brown University School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the implications of climate change for human health, with a particular emphasis on infectious diseases. She employs a combination of statistical inference and mechanistic disease modeling to understand and address health challenges posed by environmental changes. Her work has been published in prominent journals including Science, PNAS, Nature Communications, and Climatic Change. Additionally, her research has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, WIRED Magazine, and Scientific American. Baker's contributions are part of broader efforts to fuse public health with environmental science, exploring how climate change threatens health and seeking solutions to mitigate these impacts.

Research topics

• Biology
• Medicine
• Virology
• Environmental health
• Geography
• Immunology
• Internal medicine
• Demography
• Zoology
• Genetics

Selected publications

• Alarming Trends in Dengue Incidence and Mortality in Bangladesh

  The Journal of Infectious Diseases · 2023-11-24 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Bangladesh is currently experiencing the country's largest and deadliest dengue outbreak on record. This year's outbreak has been characterized by an early seasonal surge in cases, rapid geographic spread, and a high fatality rate. The alarming trends in dengue incidence and mortality this year is an urgent wake-up call for public health policymakers and researchers to pay closer attention to dengue dynamics in South Asia, to strengthen the surveillance system and diagnostic capabilitie…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Increasing intensity of enterovirus outbreaks projected with climate change

  Nature Communications · 2024-07-31 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Pathogens of the enterovirus genus, including poliovirus and coxsackieviruses, typically circulate in the summer months suggesting a possible positive association between warmer weather and transmission. Here we evaluate the environmental and demographic drivers of enterovirus transmission, as well as the implications of climate change for future enterovirus circulation. We leverage pre-vaccination era data on polio in the US as well as data on two enterovirus A serotypes in China and Japan that…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Modeling the impact of COVID‐19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on respiratory syncytial virus transmission in South Africa

  Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses · 2023-12-01 · 16 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Background: The South African government employed various nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Surveillance data from South Africa indicates reduced circulation of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) throughout the 2020-2021 seasons. Here, we use a mechanistic transmission model to project the rebound of RSV in the two subsequent seasons. Methods: We fit an age-structured epidemiological model to hospitalization data from national RSV surveillance in South Afr…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The impact of current and future climates on spatiotemporal dynamics of influenza in a tropical setting

  PNAS Nexus · 2023-09-01 · 15 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Although the drivers of influenza have been well studied in high-income settings in temperate regions, many open questions remain about the burden, seasonality, and drivers of influenza dynamics in the tropics. In temperate climates, the inverse relationship between specific humidity and transmission can explain much of the observed temporal and spatial patterns of influenza outbreaks. Yet, this relationship fails to explain seasonality, or lack there-of, in tropical and subtropical countries. H…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Medium-term scenarios of COVID-19 as a function of immune uncertainties and chronic disease

  Journal of The Royal Society Interface · 2023-08-01 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access

  As the SARS-CoV-2 trajectory continues, the longer-term immuno-epidemiology of COVID-19, the dynamics of Long COVID, and the impact of escape variants are important outstanding questions. We examine these remaining uncertainties with a simple modelling framework that accounts for multiple (antigenic) exposures via infection or vaccination. If immunity (to infection or Long COVID) accumulates rapidly with the valency of exposure, we find that infection levels and the burden of Long COVID are mark…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Bryan T. Grenfell

  Princeton Public Schools

  90 shared

• C. Jessica E. Metcalf

  Princeton University

  65 shared

• Chadi M. Saad-Roy

  38 shared

• Caroline E. Wagner

  McGill University

  24 shared

• Jeremy Farrar

  Wellcome Trust

  19 shared

• Sinead E. Morris

  Professional Services Group (United States)

  16 shared

• Andrea L. Graham

  Princeton University

  16 shared

• Simon A. Levin

  Princeton University

  16 shared

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