Lawrence Baker

Assistant Policy Researcher; Ph.D. Candidate, Pardee RAND Graduate School

Washington Office

Education

M.Sc. in technology and policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; B.Eng.-M.Eng. in manufacturing engineering, Cambridge University

One Page Bio

Overview

Lawrence Baker is an assistant policy researcher at RAND and a Ph.D candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He has an M.Sc. in technology and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.Eng in manufacturing engineering from the University of Cambridge.

Prior to joining Pardee RAND, Baker was a consultant engineer at TTP, where he designed medical devices, and an intern science-policy researcher at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). His research has focuses on modeling the impact of public health and criminal justice interventions. His RAND projects include developing RAND’s COVID-19 epidemiological model, identifying novel data sources for syndromic surveillance for mental health, and updating RAND's COMPARE microsimulation model of health insurance markets. For his Ph.D. dissertation, he is working with the L.A. County Office of Diversion and Reentry to evaluate the impact of their Reentry Intensive Case Management Services Program for people leaving jail.

Research Focus

Honors & Awards

Silver Medal, RAND

Commentary

Will the United States Declare Freedom from COVID-19 Too Soon?
RAND analyzed what could happen with COVID-19 deaths in the United States if restrictions all go away on July 4. Fully reopening the economy before Biden's vaccination target was met doubled the average number of COVID-19 deaths between Independence Day and the end of the year.
May 21, 2021 The RAND Blog

Publications

Research Brief
Increasing Subsidies and Expanding Health Insurance Options in Connecticut: Findings Without the Build Back Better Act
The authors estimated the impacts of policy options to increase the affordability of insurance in Connecticut with the assumption that subsidy enhancements enacted under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 would not continue past 2022.
Mar 31, 2022
Report
Increasing Subsidies and Expanding Health Insurance Options in Connecticut
The authors estimated the impacts of policy options to increase the affordability of insurance in Connecticut. They calculated enrollment, premiums, and state spending and considered whether the results differed by race, ethnicity, or income group.
Mar 31, 2022
Report
The U.S. Equity-First Vaccination Initiative: Early Insights
The Equity-First Vaccination Initiative aims to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in U.S. coronavirus vaccination rates. Five demonstration sites are using hyper-local, community-led strategies to increase vaccine confidence and access.
Jan 28, 2022
Research Brief
Early Insights from the Equity-First Vaccination Initiative
The Equity-First Vaccination Initiative aims to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates in the United States. Five demonstration sites are using hyper-local, community-led strategies to increase vaccine confidence and access.
Dec 20, 2021
Journal Article
Reopening California: Seeking Robust, Non-Dominated COVID-19 Exit Strategies
This paper uses simulation models and the Robust Decision Making (RDM) approach to stress-test California's reopening strategy and other alternatives over a wide range of futures.
Nov 5, 2021
Journal Article
Could Periodic Nonpharmaceutical Intervention Strategies Produce Better COVID-19 Health and Economic Outcomes?
We developed a COVID-19 transmission model to compare the effects of nonpharmaceutical public health interventions (NPIs). We find that the periodic switch between low and high NPI levels could have produced similar health outcomes as static strategies but better social welfare outcomes.
Oct 20, 2021
Journal Article
Modeling Infectious Behaviors: The Need to Account for Behavioral Adaptation in COVID-19 Models
In this essay we discuss the need for new types of simulation models of COVID-19 that couple transmission dynamics with adaptive behaviors.
Oct 20, 2021
Report
Reopening Under Uncertainty: Stress-Testing California's COVID-19 Exit Strategy
Researchers used the Robust Decision Making approach to stress-test California's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This Perspective presents lessons learned from these experiments and outlines four characteristics of the best reopening strategies.
May 10, 2021
Draft
Modeling COVID-19 Nonpharmaceutical Interventions: Exploring periodic NPI Strategies
Develops a COVID-19 transmission model used as part of RAND's web-based COVID-19 decision support tool that compares the effects of nonpharmaceutical public health interventions on health and economic outcomes.
Apr 22, 2021
Journal Article
Estimating the Cost of Industry Investment in Drug Research and Development: A Review of Methods and Results
We review and synthesize papers estimating drug R&D costs incurred by industry. We find a substantial range of per-drug costs, from $113 million–$6 billion. We discuss the data sources, methods, and assumptions used in each study and suggest areas for future research and data collection.
2021
Draft
Deep Generative Modeling in Network Science with Applications to Public Policy Research
Explores deep generative modeling in network science towards informing key public policy questions.
Sep 30, 2020
Tool
The Health and Economic Impacts of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions to Address COVID-19: A Decision Support Tool for State and Local Policymakers
There is an urgent need for an assessment of public health interventions to address coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and determine when to relax them. This document describes the COVID-19 Decision Support Tool, which is designed to fill that need.
May 4, 2020