Brook K. Baker

Professor Baker has written on theories of practice-based learning, critical perspectives on legal writing and cross-cultural lawyering. He has taught and consulted in South African law schools and law school clinics since 1997, particularly on issues of legal skills, multiculturalism, human rights, and more recently HIV/AIDS and access to medicines. Professor Baker co-teaches an intensive two-week IPR and access to medicines course each July at the University of KwaZulu Natal where he is an honorary research fellow.

Professor Baker is a policy analyst for Health GAP (Global Access Project) and is actively engaged in campaigns for universal access to treatment, prevention, and care for people living with HIV/AIDS, especially expanded and improved medical treatment.  He has written and consulted extensively on intellectual property rights, trade, and access to medicines, including with the African Union, ASEAN, Venezuela, CARICOM, Thailand, UK DfID, the World Health Organization, the Millennium Development Goals Project, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Open Society Institute, UNDP, UNITAID, the Medicines Patent Pool, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, and others. He works on policy issues concerning the Global Fund and the US PEPFAR Program, and how those priority disease initiatives might contribute more broadly to improving health care delivery in developing countries. Similarly, he works on issues involving human resources for health and health system strengthening and is a member of the steering committee of the Health Workforce Advocacy Initiative of the Global Health Workforce Alliance. Finally, he analyzes resource needs for global health, innovative financing mechanisms, and IMF macroeconomic policies that restrict increased government and donor spending on health and education in developing countries.