Carolina Barbosa is a health economist in RTI International’s Behavioral Health Financing, Economics, and Evaluation Program. Her research focuses on the economic evaluation of health care programs, including analyses of cost effectiveness, cost-benefit, and return on investment. She has specific interests in the evaluation of public health programs, the application of statistical and decision-analytic methods, epidemiological modeling, and the economics of addiction.
Dr. Barbosa joined RTI in 2010. Currently, she is the principal investigator of a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)-funded grant to develop a dynamic model that establishes a link between drinking patterns, health consequences, and alcohol treatment effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. She also serves as data coordinating center lead for the development of a simulation model to analyze the cost effectiveness of interventions implemented in the HEALing Communities Study. This National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded effort is focused on an integrated approach to the opioid crisis. Also for NIDA, Dr. Barbosa is conducting a budget impact analysis of the HEAL Initiative Preventing Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) in Older Adolescents and Young Adults. Dr Barbosa has also completed and published the results of several economic evaluations of health care interventions for the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, many using simulation modeling to support decision making based on the clinical and financial value of substance abuse interventions.
