Natasha Baker

Senior clinical research midwife

Natasha Baker is a midwife by background and her most recent clinical role was as a senior clinical research midwife at UCLH. Her research interests are perinatal mental health and specifically, the intersection between women’s mental health and infant feeding. In 2017 she completed an MRes at St Georges University, exploring midwives perceptions of screening for mental health in pregnancy, following which she worked with the King’s Women’s Mental Health Group (formally the section of women’s mental health). During this time she became interested in the infant feeding support needs of women with severe mental illness and recognised a significant gap in the literature so developed a research proposal with the overarching aim of broadening understanding of infant feeding in the context of maternal mental illness to inform future resources in this area. She was awarded a prestigious Doctoral Clinical and Practitioner Academic Fellowship (DCAF) from the National Institute for Health and Care research (NIHR) in 2021 and commenced her PhD with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience where she is currently based.