Kellan Baker

Kellan Baker is a Health Policy Analyst with the LGBT Research and Communications Project at American Progress, where his work includes strategically advocating for LGBT inclusion in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, improving data collection on LGBT health and health disparities, and working with the Department of Health and Human Services on a broad range of LGBT health issues. Prior to joining American Progress, Kellan was the senior policy associate at the National Coalition for LGBT Health, an 80-member organization that is the nation’s leading community voice in federal LGBT health policy. At the coalition, Kellan worked closely with the Department of Health and Human Services and leading LGBT health experts to develop the new LGBT health topic area in “Healthy People 2020,” the federal blueprint for a healthier America between 2010 and 2020. He also led efforts to advance LGBT health issues through the drafting and implementation of the Affordable Care Act and in a range of initiatives across HHS, including the March 2011 report on LGBT health from the Institute of Medicine. Before the coalition, Kellan spent several years in Moscow, Russia, where he co-founded a group that advocates for quality health care for transgender people in the former Soviet Union and worked with Special Olympics Russia. As part of the first class of interns in the Obama White House in 2009, he interned for the special assistant to the president for disability policy. Kellan is an affiliated faculty member for LGBT health policy at the Center for Population Research in LGBT Health at the Fenway Institute, and he holds a master of public health in global public health policy and a master of arts in international development from George Washington University, where he was elected to the Delta Omega Public Health Honors Society. He graduated from Swarthmore College with high honors in astrophysics and Russian.