Jennifer Bobb, PhD, aims to apply rigorous statistical methods to address important problems in public health. She is interested in statistical issues that occur when data that were not originally collected for research purposes, such as administrative claims data or electronic health records, are used for addressing scientific questions relevant to clinical practice and health policy.
At Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI), Dr. Bobb collaborates with scientists across a broad range of research areas, including mental and behavioral health and social determinants of health. As an investigator with the Health Care Systems Addictions Research Network, she provides statistical leadership on pragmatic clinical trials at Kaiser Permanente Washington and other health systems. She is the lead statistician on a stepped wedge trial evaluating how mental health and wellness integration at Kaiser Permanente Washington affects clinical care and health outcomes, as well as a multi-site pragmatic trial to evaluate a program for increasing medication treatment for opioid use disorders within primary care settings. She has developed statistical guidance to address methodological challenges introduced by pragmatic trials that leverage electronic health records data to define study eligibility and outcomes.
With expertise in environmental biostatistics, Dr. Bobb has led large-scale epidemiological investigations on the health effects of exposure to extreme heat and air pollution. She developed flexible modeling approaches for estimating the health effects of multi-pollutant mixtures that broadly apply to settings where large numbers of exposures may interact or have complex relationships with health, along with publicly available software implementing these methods. In recent work, she is collaborating on the Moving to Health study, which explores whether changes in the built environment, such as access to healthy foods and walkability, affect long-term weight and diabetes management.
Dr. Bobb is an affiliate assistant professor in biostatistics at the University of Washington and an associate editor of the journal Biostatistics. She serves on the Committee for Funded Research of the American Statistical Association and is a member of the International Biometric Society. Before joining KPWHRI, Dr. Bobb completed her PhD in biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2012, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Bayesian methods; analysis of observational data; pragmatic trial design and analysis; analysis of spatial-temporal data
Biostatistics; implementation science
Biostatistics; behavioral health; alcohol and substance use disorders
Biostatistics; built environment
Health effects of air pollution, extreme weather events; statistical methods for complex environmental mixtures
Prevention and treatment
Lee AK, Bobb JF, Richards JE, Achtmeyer CE, Ludman E, Oliver M, Caldeiro RM, Parrish R, Lozano PM, Lapham GT, Williams EC, Glass JE, Bradley KA. Integrating alcohol-related prevention and treatment into primary care: A cluster randomized implementation trial. JAMA Intern Med. 2023 Apr 1;183(4):e227083. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.7083. PubMed
Jack HE, Oliver MM, Berger DB, Bobb JF, Bradley KA, Hallgren KA. Association between clinical measures of unhealthy alcohol use and subsequent year hospital admissions in a primary care population. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2023 Apr 1;245:109821. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.109821. Epub 2023 Feb 24. PubMed
DeBar LL, Bushey MA, Kroenke K, Bobb JF, Schoenbaum M, Thompson EE, Justice M, Zatzick D, Hamilton LK, McMullen CK, Hallgren KA, Benes LL, Forman DP, Caldeiro RM, Brown RP, Campbell NL, Anderson ML, Son S, Haggstrom DA, Whiteside L, Schleyer TKL, Bradley KA. A patient-centered nurse-supported primary care-based collaborative care program to treat opioid use disorder and depression: Design and protocol for the MI-CARE randomized controlled trial. Contemp Clin Trials. 2023 Apr;127:107124. doi: 10.1016/j.cct.2023.107124. [Epub ahead of print2023 Feb 18]. PubMed
Glass JE, Dorsey CN, Beatty T, Bobb JF, Wong ES, Palazzo L, King D, Mogk J, Stefanik-Guizlo K, Idu A, Key D, Fortney JC, Thomas R, McWethy AG, Caldeiro RM, Bradley KA. Study protocol for a factorial-randomized controlled trial evaluating the implementation, costs, effectiveness, and sustainment of digital therapeutics for substance use disorder in primary care (DIGITS Trial). Implement Sci. 2023 Feb 1;18(1):3. doi: 10.1186/s13012-022-01258-9. PubMed
Wartko PD, Qiu H, Idu AE, Yu O, McCormack J, Matthews AG, Bobb JF, Saxon AJ, Campbell CI, Liu D, Braciszewski JM, Murphy SM, Burganowski RP, Murphy MT, Horigian VE, Hamilton LK, Lee AK, Boudreau DM, Bradley KA. Baseline representativeness of patients in clinics enrolled in the PRimary care Opioid Use Disorders treatment (PROUD) trial: omparison of trial and non-trial clinics in the same health systems. BMC Health Serv Res. 2022 Dec 29;22(1):1593. doi: 10.1186/s12913-022-08915-1. PubMed
Matson TE, Lapham GT, Bobb JF, Oliver M, Hallgren KA, Williams EC, Bradley KA. Validity of the Single-Item Screen-Cannabis (SIS-C) for cannabis use disorder screening in routine care. JAMA Netw Open. 2022 Nov 1;5(11):e2239772. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.39772. PubMed
A new primary care approach improves alcohol-related preventive care as well as care for alcohol use disorder.
Use in pregnancy and screening in primary care studied by KPWHRI’s Kiel, Matson, and Lapham.
Using doctor's notes to learn about drug reactions, dementia, and cannabis use.
Top pediatric oncology hospitals reported lasting changes to programs involving visits with animals.