Brook Baker

Professor Brook Baker teaches disability discrimination law, negotiations, and is developing a new course focused on human rights, intellectual property and access to medicines at Northeastern University. He has taught and consulted in South African law schools and law school clinics since 1997. Professor Baker is an honorary research fellow at the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa.

Professor Baker is also a senior 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, investor-state dispute settlement, access to medicines, and medicines regulatory policy, including with the African Union, NEPAD, South Africa, Uganda, ASEAN, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Venezuela, CARICOM, UK DfID, the World Health Organization, the Millennium Development Goals Project, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Open Society Institute, UNAIDS, UNDP, Unitaid, the Medicines Patent Pool, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law and others. He serves as a key advisor to NGO delegation to Unitaid, which acts to improve market dynamics and early market entry of medicines and diagnostics needed to address HIV/AIDS, TB, Hepatitis C and malaria.

Professor Baker also 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. 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.

Recent Publications

Baker, Brook. Scoping a Compulsory Licensing Strategy for Countries Excluded from Gilead’s Long-Acting Lenacapavir Voluntary Licenses (Jan. 28, 2025), https://healthgap.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Lenacapavir-Compulsory-License-Campaign.5.docx.pdf

Jishian Ravinthiran, Bryce Robinson, Peter Maybarduk, Rachel Cohen, Pascale Boulet, Michelle Childs, Mihir Mankad, Isabel Parkey, James Love, Melissa Barber, Brook Baker, Integrating Equity Into Licensing Agreements For Taxpayer-Funded Technologies Health Affairs (Dec. 19, 2024), https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/integrating-equity-into-licensing-agreements-taxpayer-funded-technologies

Baker, B.K. and Hassan, F., 2023. Covid-19’s silver lining? The WHO mRNA Technology Transfer Programme for the Global South Overcoming IP Barriers is central to the South-South Innovation and Access Goals of the WHO mRNA Technology Transfer Programme. Pandemics and the Illumination of Hidden Things: Lessons from South Africa on the Global response to Covid-19 (Health Justice Initiative, 2023)., Northeastern University School of Law Research Paper, (447).

Saxena, A., Baker, B.K., Banda, A., Herlitz, A., Miller, J., Karrar, K., Fleurbaey, M., Chiwa, E., Atuire, C.A., Hirose, I. and Hassoun, N., 2023. Pandemic preparedness and response: beyond the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator. BMJ global health, 8(1).

Perehudoff, K., Hoen, E.T., Mara, K., Balasubramaniam, T., Abbott, F., Baker, B., Boulet, P., Kamal-Yanni, M., Martin, M., Tellez, V.M. and Natsis, Y., 2022. A pandemic treaty for equitable global access to medical countermeasures: seven recommendations for sharing intellectual property, know-how and technology. BMJ Global Health, 7(7). https://gh.bmj.com/content/bmjgh/7/7/e009709.full.pdf 

Baker, B.K., 2021. Campaigning for both innovation and equitable access to COVID-19 medicines. In COVID-19 and Human Rights (pp. 257-273). Routledge.

Baker, B.K., 2021. Hamstringing tHe HealtH tecHnology response to coViD-19: tHe BurDens of exclusiVity anD policy solutions. Ne. UL Rev., 13, p.689.