Abigail Barker’s research focuses on econometric modeling and analyses of topics relating to health insurance markets, Medicaid payment policy, and health reform. She also studies nutrition and food policy from an economics lens, exploring pricing strategies as potential levers that can affect health in a more upstream and potentially cost-effective manner.

Barker's ongoing work for the Rural Policy Research Institute focuses on understanding how markets can be successfully integrated into the health-care sector, using data from the Affordable Care Act and Health Insurance marketplaces, as well as Medicare Advantage, to inform rural health policy. For several years, she designed and helped the State of Missouri implement value-based strategies within its Medicaid program across a wide range of efforts including in maternal health, rural population health, hospital payment, and other areas. She now leverages that experience to design community-involved, policy-focused research.

Barker is the associate director for policy partnerships at the Center for Advancing Health Services, Policy & Economics Research. 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.