STEPHANIE BAKER, PhD, MS, PT
Dr. Stephanie Baker is granddaughter of farmers, Navy & Marine veterans, matriarch CEOs, and early child educators. She is the daughter of Phil & Dean, sister of Alicia, and a girl mom to Ariana. Raised by a father from the city of Chicago and a mother from the rural country of Mississippi, Dr. Baker grew up in the flat lands of Central Ohio.
She earned a bachelor's in psychology and master's in physical therapy degree from Washington University - St. Louis and worked as a physical therapist for several years in a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings. Guided by a family history of healthcare, public health nursing, activism and advocacy, Dr. Baker pursued a PhD in Health Behavior from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health to discover a love and passion for health equity activism.
Her research interests include social determinants of racial health equity, community-based participatory research, and using racial equity, antiracism, and intersectionality lenses to understand and address health inequities. Dr. Baker partners with several grassroots and community organizations. She was a 10-year member of the Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative in Greensboro, NC to address racial inequities in breast and lung cancer treatment. She works with SpiritHouse, Inc. in Durham, NC, where she lives, to promote transformative community healing, health and wellbeing. She is a co-founder of the Alamance County Health Equity Collective, a community-based participatory research partnership created to address health equity by centering its work on the Community Health Assessment (CHA) and Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIP).
Dr. Baker is also an organizer and trainer with the Racial Equity Institute, a member of the Black Pearls Society, Incorporated, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Dr. Baker hopes to contribute to racial justice, social justice and liberation movements through a teaching, research, and community and institutional organizing.
YANICA FAUSTIN, PhD, MPH
Dr. Yanica F. Faustin is an Assistant Professor at Elon University. She received her PhD from the Maternal and Child Health Department at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health where she also minored in Sociology, her MPH in Community Health Education from UNC-Greensboro and her BA in Biology and Ethical Genetics from Colby College. Dr. Faustin is Haitian-American and from Brooklyn. Her research interests are largely shaped by her diasporic upbringing in a majority minority and immigrant neighborhood. Dr. Faustin’s research investigates the relationship between Nativity, Racism, and Maternal/Infant health outcomes.
