After medical school, Dr. Baker became a resident at Grady Memorial Hospital and then at the VA Hospital in Atlanta, GA. During his fellowship at Tufts New England Medical Center, he enjoyed opportunities to work with physicians, surgeons, and laboratory investigators on the cutting edge of liver disease research. In 1973 he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago.
It was there that Dr. Baker and his fellow physicians worked to establish the first liver transplant program in the Midwest. Not long after the program was established in 1985, it grew into one of the largest in the country. Under the guidance of Dr. Baker and his colleagues, the transplant program at University of Chicago was the first in the nation to perform living donor transplants in children, opening up significantly more opportunities for children suffering from liver disease to receive the tissue that they needed.
The program at University of Chicago was also among the first to successfully perform liver transplants in patients with acute liver failure as well as combination liver/heart transplants. During his time in Chicago, Dr. Baker was also involved in some of the first studies to introduce successful treatments for patients with Hepatitis C.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Baker has contributed to more than a hundred scientific papers and medical books about liver disorders.
Dr. Baker came to Northwestern in 2000 and has brought his thorough knowledge of liver disorders to the transplant program. Retiring from direct medical care in 2005, Dr. Baker continues to instruct medical students, house officers, and fellows about liver disease. As an advocate of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the CTC, Dr. Baker stands behind the novel approaches and innovative studies being undertaken at Northwestern. He strongly believes that the research being performed by Northwestern’s physicians in transplant surgery and medicine will provide better solutions for patients suffering from liver disease as well as a host of other medical concerns.
For me — and I think for all of us who have the privilege of working with ill patients requiring transplantation — every laboratory experiment, every student teaching session, every dollar spent is another step toward improving the health of our patients