Jessica Chubak, PhD, is an epidemiologist who works to improve cancer diagnosis, treatment, control, and survivorship. She contributes to several national collaborations that are finding practical, efficient, effective ways to screen for cancer, especially colorectal cancer. She also studies how common medications affect cancer risk and recurrence. Intrigued by how pets positively affect health, Dr. Chubak is studying animal-assisted activities in clinics and hospitals where children get treated for cancer. Dr. Chubak’s methodological research focuses on the use of administrative and electronic health record data in epidemiologic and health services studies.
Dr. Chubak joined KPWHRI in 2007, bringing expertise in epidemiologic methods, pharmacoepidemiology, and cancer. Awarded a Fulbright graduate student grant, Dr. Chubak pursued her master's degree in bioethics and health law in New Zealand before completing her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Washington (UW). Dr. Chubak is an affiliate associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the UW School of Public Health, where she enjoys guest-lecturing and getting to work with students.
Epidemiology; colorectal cancer; medication use; survivorship; recurrence; secondary prevention; quality of life; automated data collection; screening; animal-assisted activities; survivorship
Screening
Cancer risk and use of common medications
Chubak J, Burnett-Hartman AN, Barlow WE, Corley DA, Croswell JM, Neslund-Dudas C, Vachani A, Silver MI, Tiro JA, Kamineni A. Estimating cancer screening sensitivity and specificity using healthcare utilization data: defining the accuracy assessment interval. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2022 Aug 2;31(8):1517-1520. doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-22-0232. PubMed
Nicholson BD, Thompson MJ, Hobbs FDR, Nguyen M, McLellan J, Green B, Chubak J, Oke JL. Measured weight loss as a precursor to cancer diagnosis: retrospective cohort analysis of 43Â 302 primary care patients. J Cachexia Sarcopenia Muscle. 2022 Oct; 13(5): 2492-2503. Published online 2022 Jul 28. doi: 10.1002/jcsm.1305. PubMed
Sarma EA, Thompson MJ, Bowles EJA, Burnett-Hartman AN, Hubbard RA, Yu O, Chubak J. Patient and tumour characteristics of screening-age adults diagnosed with screen-detected versus symptomatic colon cancer. Colorectal Dis. 2022 Jun 23. doi: 10.1111/codi.16232. PubMed
Schottinger JE, Jensen CD, Ghai NR, Chubak J, Lee JK, Kamineni A, Halm EA, Sugg-Skinner C, Udaltsova N, Zhao WK, Ziebell RA, Contreras R, Kim EJ, Fireman BH, Quesenberry CP, Corley DA. Association of physician adenoma detection rates with postcolonoscopy colorectal cancer. JAMA. 2022 Jun 7;327(21):2114-2122. doi: 10.1001/jama.2022.6644. PubMed
Pocobelli G, Ichikawa L, Yu O, Green BB, Meyers K, Gray R, Shea M, Chubak J. Validation of international classification of diseases, tenth revision, clinical modification diagnosis codes for heart failure subtypes. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2022 Jun 7. doi: 10.1002/pds.5489. Online ahead of print. PubMed
Chubak J, Lund JL. Noncancer comparators in cancer survivorship studies. Cancer. 2022 May 3. doi: 10.1002/cncr.34253. Online ahead of print. PubMed
Liu X, Chubak J, Hubbard RA, Chen Y. SAT: a Surrogate-Assisted Two-wave case boosting sampling method, with application to EHR-based association studies. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2021 Dec 28:ocab267. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocab267. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed
How KPWHRI is contributing to better cancer screening and better outcomes for patients.
Top pediatric oncology hospitals reported lasting changes to programs involving visits with animals.
Aruna Kamineni, PhD, MPH, discusses her recent study on how guidelines report screening risks.