Jonathan Baker

Jonathan T. Baker is a health and interpersonal communication scholar who studies how everyday talk and public discourse shape access to health and wellbeing. His work investigates how prejudice surfaces in micro-level encounters (e.g., patient–clinician talk, social support) and macro-level arenas (e.g., news coverage, government policy, legal systems), and how those discourses shape access to healthcare, wellbeing, and health outcomes.

Research Interests

Dr. Baker’s research program spans three interlocking areas: (1) communication and structural health disparities, (2) difficult conversations; and (3) communicating difference.

Communication and structural health disparities

This work looks at how everyday talk and institutional communication shapes who gets care and who doesn’t. Dr. Baker strives to make visible these differences in health outcomes and imagine more just and liberating communication practices.

Difficult conversations

This work examines how people navigate emotionally charged, high-stakes health dialogues (e.g., DIY HRT disclosures with clinicians, infertility). Dr. Baker identifies the tensions people experience when engaging in difficult conversations, and advances patient-centered strategies grounded in communication theory.

Communication and difference

This work examines how individuals articulate, negotiate, and bridge differences across identities and experiences (e.g., perspective-taking in stories of difficulty and identity transitions among stigmatized groups). With this work Dr. Baker seeks to foster understanding, reduce stigma, and sustain relationships across divides.

Selected Publications

• Baker, J. T., Cusanno, B., & Dean, M. (2023). Dilemmas in patient–clinician communication about do-it-yourself hormone replacement therapy: A qualitative study. SSM – Qualitative Research in Health, 3.
• Hintz, E. A., & Baker, J. T. (2021). A performative face theory analysis of online facework by the formerly involuntarily celibate. International Journal of Communication, 15, 3047–3066.
• Koenig Kellas, J., Baker, J., Minnear, M., Cardwell, M., & Kranstuber Horstman, H. (2020). Communicated perspective-taking and storylistening in friends’ stories of difficulty. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(1), 19–41.
• Dean, M., Baker, J., Reblin, M., Hintz, E. A., Vadaparampil, S. T., Haskins, C., & Quinn, G. P. (2022). Feasibility, acceptability, and outcomes of a pilot intervention facilitating communication about family building between patients with inherited cancer risk and their partners. PEC – Innovation, 1.

View Jonathan T. Baker's Google Scholar