Judith C. Barker, PhD, passed away on March 28 at the age of 76.
Dr. Barker was a founding research investigator in the Center to Address Disparities in Children's Oral Health (CAN DO), UCSF's research center that focuses on preventing tooth decay, or early childhood caries, in young children and reducing health inequities. She was instrumental in R01-level projects in CAN DO I (Cultural Barriers to Oral Health Care in Children and Hispanic Oral Health: A Rural and Urban Ethnography) and CAN DO II (Salt Fluoridation Study). She deftly led CAN DO as Director 2010-2012 during a transition period; additionally, she served as CAN DO Associate Director 2005-2010 and again 2012-2017. Her paper Stigmatized Biologies: Examining the Cumulative Effects of Oral Health Disparities in Mexican-American Families was awarded the Stephen Polgar Prize for best 2010 paper in the journal Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Additional papers she co-authored focusing on children’s oral health have been published in American Ethnologist, Appetite, BMC Oral Health, Community Dental Health, Journal of Public Health Dentistry, the American Anthropological Association’s NAPA Bulletin, and Pediatric Dentistry. In total, she published over 110 peer-reviewed research papers and over 25 book chapters and books.
Her 30 year career at UCSF included work as a community-based researcher and she collaborated extensively with School of Dentistry researchers. She worked with faculty and researchers from across the UCSF campus, the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, as well as private research institutes in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was an engaged teacher and integral mentor in multiple programs throughout UCSF, including the School of Dentistry.
"Dr. Barker was the consummate scholar, educator, and research colleague. I learned a great deal from Dr. Barker, including to more greatly appreciate the role of different research disciplines – most of what I know about qualitative research, I learned from Dr. Barker in our Center research meetings, presentations and discussions," current CAN DO Director, Stuart Gansky said. “Dr. Barker was an instrumental mentor to several faculty in the Division of Oral Epidemiology & Dental Public Health, boosting their career trajectories. A personal highlight for me was the opportunity to present our Center’s results together at a symposium at the Hispanic Dental Association’s research meeting from theoretical, quantitative, and qualitative perspectives.”
She retired in 2014 as emeritus professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Medicine, at UCSF and was still publishing in 2022. Her influences on oral health disparities research and researcher mentorship in the School of Dentistry will be long-lasting.
A non-denominational celebration of Judith Barker’s life will be held on April 15th, 3 p.m., at St John’s UCC, San Francisco, 501 Laguna Honda Blvd, with a reception to follow at the same place.
For those out of the area, the Celebration of Life will also be available via Zoom, accessible at sfstjohnsucc.org and select Zoom Link.
In lieu of flowers, Judith asked that donations be made to the fund she created after her wife’s death in November 2022, to continue their support of social justice issues for LGBT+ populations, particularly for the mental health of transgender youth https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z3YQ/campaign/C-13B1E
