MD, FCFPC, FASAM, ABAM
Associate Clinical Professor – UBC Faculty of Medicine
After working for over a decade as a family doctor and thirty-five years as an Addiction Medicine consultant and medical educator, Ray retired from clinical practice. Since 2016 he has focused on recovery management and the transformation of addiction services into an integrated recovery-oriented care system. Joined by some of his medical colleagues, they have termed this endeavour Recovery Medicine.
Between 1990 and 1995, Ray developed and directed AMIR, an award-winning University of British Columbia undergraduate Addiction medicine and student support program. On behalf of the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, he served as the principal author of the first standards of care for addiction medicine. Dr. Baker developed the rules for medical fitness for Canadian safety-critical railway workers with substance use disorders.
In 2003 he won the Nyswander-Dole award from the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence. He served on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Addictive Diseases. As a member of Canada’s CCSA National Recovery Research Expert Advisory committee, Ray helped design and interpret Canada’s 2017 Life in Recovery Survey.
In 2018 Dr. Baker trained as a recovery coach and then as a recovery coach trainer with CCAR, the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery. He served as an expert consultant to Alberta’s Mental Health and Addiction Advisory Committee, assisting the province’s transition to a Recovery Oriented System of Care. He designed a Canadian Recovery Coach training curriculum currently in use by several organizations in training over 200 recovery coaches.
In November 2022, the Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine awarded Dr. Baker their prestigious lifetime achievement award.
