Jeanette Birnbaum PhD, MPH

Dr. Jeanette Birnbaum began her studies in the Health Services Ph.D. program in 2010 and pursued an area of emphasis in Evaluation Sciences and Statistics. In her dissertation "Simulation Modeling to enhance comparative effectiveness studies in Cancer," Jeanette worked with Dr. Ruth Etzioni at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) to project the contemporary harms and benefits of three diagnostic and screening cancer interventions. Jeanette received a Comparative Effectiveness Research Dissertation Award from UW's Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program, and her dissertation papers won student prizes from UW's Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program and the Health Policy Statistics section of the American Statistical Association. Her papers have been featured at the UW Scholar's Studio and in the Fred Hutch Science Spotlight and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and Medical Decision Making.

Prior to entering the Ph.D. The program, Jeanette was a post-bachelor research fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and earned her MPH in Global Health Metrics from the University of Washington in 2010. In her current position at UW's Center for AIDS Research, she is working with Dr. Martina Morris and colleagues to build the first network epidemic model of heterosexual HIV transmission in Seattle/King County. Through an FHCRC pilot grant, Jeanette is also working with Dr. Etzioni to extend one of her dissertation models beyond its original domestic application to several international settings.