Abigail Barker is the faculty lead for data and methods at the Center for Advancing Health Services, Policy & Economics Research at the Institute for Public Health. Her role includes helping social science and clinical researchers add cost and cost-effectiveness analyses to their work to increase policy relevance, as well as creating data visualizations to allow stakeholders to interactively understand the tradeoffs of various health policy choices.
Her own research focuses on econometric modeling and microsimulations on topics relating to health insurance markets, Medicaid, payment policy, and health reform. Her ongoing work for the Rural Policy Research Institute focuses on understanding how markets can be successfully integrated into the health care sector, using the Affordable Care Act and Health Insurance Marketplaces data as well as Medicare Advantage data to inform rural health policy. A newer research area is nutrition and food policy, as these are potential levers that can affect health in a more upstream and potentially cost-effective manner.
Abigail Barker
- Research Associate Professor
- PhD, University of Minnesota
- Office Phone: 314-935-3513
- Email: arbarker@wustl.edu
- Download CV
Areas of Focus:
- Economic modeling
- Food policy
- Health insurance markets
- Medicaid
- Rural health policy
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Featured Publications
Assessing the impact of Medicaid expansion on insurance coverage among children with cancer
JAMA Pediatrics
March 2020
Effect of Low Populations on Rural Health Insurance Premiums In the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program
Health Affairs
December 2019
The Cumulative Effect of Health Insurance on Health Status
Health Services Research
July (3rd Quarter/Summer) 2020