Associate Professor Michael Baker

MBChB, FAFPHM, FRACMA, DComH, DObst

Programme Co-Director, He Kainga Oranga/Housing and Health Research Programme; Principal Investigator for Social Housing Outcomes Worth (SHOW) Study; Principal Investigator for CDC funded project on containment of pandemic influenza.
Michael Baker is a public health physician and associate professor at the University of Otago, Wellington. He has worked extensively on the surveillance, investigation and control of infectious diseases.  His more recent work has focussed on the importance of health determinants, notably housing conditions.
Michael’s research interests include the health effects of household crowding, home injury, homelessness, seasonality of disease, disease surveillance systems, the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005), pandemic influenza and how it can be contained, infectious disease epidemiology, emerging infectious diseases, and enteric diseases such as campylobacteriosis (see current and recent projects below).  Michael is a member of the government’s Pandemic Influenza Technical Advisory Group (PITAG). See the Pandemic Influenza Research Group’s NZ site for published work on influenza.

Michael has a long-standing involvement in developing the public health workforce in NZ.  He is currently Director of Continuing Professional Development for the New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine (NZCPHM).  Michael is co-academic convenor of the Public Health Summer School and coordinates the Applied Epidemiology Courses.
He also has a specific interest in the role of film in public health teaching.

Current and recent projects (with funding and/or collaborating agency)

  • Health effects of social housing (Housing New Zealand Corporation)
  • Housing and Health, including home injury (HRC)
  • Homelessness (Statistics NZ)
  • Seasonality of mortality and morbidity
  • Surveillance sector review (Ministry of Health and Allen and Clarke)
  • International Health Regulations (World Health Organisation)
  • New Zealand’s Influenza H1N1 epidemic (ESR and Ministry of Health)
  • Methods for containing influenza at the borders of island countries (US Centres for Disease Control)
  • Epidemiology of TB and Rheumatic Fever (HRC)
  • Epidemiology of close-contact infectious diseases (Ministry of Health)
  • Epidemiology of skin infections and necrotising fasciitis (Ministry of Health)
  • Role of contaminated chicken as a cause of NZs campylobacteriosis epidemic
  • Epidemiology of enteric diseases in NZ, including giardiasis and cryptosporidiosis
  • Interactive teaching of medical students