Jessica Chubak, PhD

“My research focuses on improving cancer control by finding effective ways to get screened for cancer and to navigate treatment and survivorship.”

Jessica Chubak, PhD

Senior Investigator, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Jessica.Chubak@kp.org
206-287-2556
Animal-assisted interactions research on Facebook

Curriculum vitae (CV)

Biography

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.

Research interests and experience

Cancer

Epidemiology; colorectal cancer; medication use; survivorship; recurrence; secondary prevention; quality of life; automated data collection; screening; animal-assisted activities; survivorship
Health Services & Economics

Screening
Medication Use & Patient Safety

Cancer risk and use of common medications

Recent publications

Haas JS, Cheng D, Yu L, Atlas SJ, Clark C, Feldman S, Silver MI, Kamineni A, Chubak J, Pocobelli G, Tiro JA, Kobrin SC. Variation in the receipt of human papilloma virus co-testing for cervical screening: individual, provider, facility and healthcare system characteristics. Prev Med. 2022 Jan;154:106871. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2021.106871. Epub 2021 Nov 8. PubMed

Zhu Y, Hubbard RA, Chubak J, Roy J, Mitra N. Core concepts in pharmacoepidemiology: violations of the positivity assumption in the causal analysis of observational data: consequences and statistical approaches. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2021 Nov;30(11):1471-1485. doi: 10.1002/pds.5338. Epub 2021 Aug 24. PubMed

Sarma EA, Thompson MJ, Bowles EA, Burnett-Hartman AN, Hubbard RA, Yu O, Chubak J. Patient and tumor characteristics of screening-age adults diagnosed with screen-detected versus symptomatic colon cancer. Colorectal Dis. 2022 Jun 23. doi: 10.1111/codi.16232. Online ahead of print. PubMed

Beatty JD, Sun Q, Markowitz D, Chubak J, Huang B, Etzioni R. Identifying breast cancer recurrence histories via patient-reported outcomes. J Cancer Surviv. 2021 Apr 14. doi: 10.1007/s11764-021-01033-7. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed

Hubbard RA, Lett E, Ho GYF, Chubak J. Characterizing bias due to differential exposure ascertainment in electronic health record data. Health Serv Outcomes Res Methodol. 2021;21(3):309-323. doi: 10.1007/s10742-020-00235-3. Epub 2021 Jan 4. PubMed

A'mar T, Beatty JD, Fedorenko C, Markowitz D, Corey T, Lange J, Schwartz SM, Huang B, Chubak J, Etzioni R. Correction: incorporating breast cancer recurrence events into population-based cancer registries using medical claims: cohort study. JMIR Cancer. 2020;6(2):e23821. doi: 10.2196/23821. PubMed

Zheng Y, Corley DA, Doubeni C, Halm E, Shortreed SM, Barlow WE, Zauber A, Tosteson TD, Chubak J. Analyses of preventive care measures with incomplete historical data in electronic medical records: an example from colorectal cancer screening. Ann Appl Stat.14(2), 1030-1044. https://doi.org/10.1214/20-AOAS1342.