Janet Rosenbaum, PhD

Academic Qualifications:

• Postdoctoral Fellowship: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• PhD: Harvard University
• MA: Harvard University

Background and Expertise:

Janet Rosenbaum studies educational and economic factors in adolescent health. Her methodological expertise is in causal inference methods such as matched sampling. Her current projects include high school suspension (funded by the Spencer Foundation), community colleges (funded by the American Educational Research Association), and coerced unsafe sex and pregnancy. Dr. Rosenbaum completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health under a Centers for Disease Control sexually transmitted diseases training grant. She also earned a Ph.D. in health policy and statistics, an M.A. in statistics, and a B.A. in physics, all from Harvard University. Her dissertation studied virginity pledges and adolescents' inconsistent reporting of their sexual histories, and was covered by media including the New York Times, National Public Radio, and Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update.

Areas of Study

Health behaviors of community college students

Community college students are a large and growing portion of the young adult population in the United States. Little public health research has focused on this group. This project --- currently funded by the American Educational Research Association, and funded in the past by the American Institutes for Research from a Gates Foundation grant --- characterizes the community college student population. Studies include quantification of educational health disparities between community college graduates versus other young adults (Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology, in press), a longitudinal case-control study to identify factors that predict community college graduation, and identification of health risk behaviors of community college students.

Out-of-school suspension and expulsion and adolescent risk behavior

In 2003, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement that out-of-school suspension and expulsion "jeopardize children's health and safety." Schools make more liberal use of out-of-school expulsion and suspension than in the past, but little or no public health research has tested the outcomes for students who were suspended or expelled. This project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, quantifies long-term educational and risk behavior outcomes of students who were suspended/expelled from school, and identifies groups that are more strongly affected.

Economic factors in adolescents' sexual behavior

Some youths obtain spending money from their romantic partners. Past research has found that non-romantic relationships in which money is exchanged directly for sex are risky, but we know little about risks associated with romantic relationships that include economic exchanges. Dr. Rosenbaum found that condom non-use is twice as common among adolescent girls whose boyfriends are their primary source of spending money, compared with girls who have other sources. Employment may help adolescents stay independent but may pose other problems.

Selected Honors

• Population Association of America, poster prize, 2012
• Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine Early Investigators' Award finalist (one of 4), 2011
• Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), poster prize, 2008

• Richard B Freeman, Eric Weinstein, Elizabeth Marincola, Janet Rosenbaum, Frank Solomon. Competition and careers in biosciences. Science. 2001; 2293–2294.
• Janet Rosenbaum. Reborn a virgin: Adolescents’ retracting of virginity pledges and sexual histories.
• American Journal of Public Health. 2006; 96:1098–1103.
• Janet Rosenbaum. Patient teenagers?: Virginity pledges as a marker for lower sexual activity. Pediatrics. 2009 Jan;123(1):e110-20.
• Janet Rosenbaum. Truth or consequences: The intertemporal consistency of adolescent self-report on the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2009 Jun 1;169(11):1388-97.
• S Riedel, JH Melendez, AT An, JE Rosenbaum, JM Zenilman. Procalcitonin as a Marker for the Detection of Bacteremia and Sepsis in the Emergency Department. Am J Clin Pathol 2011;135:182–189.
• Janet Rosenbaum. Gun utopias?: Firearm access and ownership in Israel and Switzerland. Journal of Public Health Policy. 2012 Feb;33(1):46–58.
• Janet Rosenbaum. Degrees of health disparities: Health status disparities between young adults with high school diplomas, sub-baccalaureate degrees, and baccalaureate degrees. Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology. 2012; 12(2):156–68.
• Janet Rosenbaum, Jonathan Zenilman, Eve Rose, Gina Wingood, Ralph DiClemente. Condoms, cash, and cars: Economic factors in low socioeconomic status women’s condom use. Journal of Adolescent Health. 2012 Sep;51(3):233–41.
• Janet Rosenbaum, Byron Weathersbee. True Love Waits. Do Southern Baptists? Premarital sexual behavior among newly married Southern Baptist Sunday school students. Journal of Religion and Health. 2013 Mar;52(1):263–75.
• James Rosenbaum, Janet Rosenbaum, Beyond BA Blinders: Lessons from Occupational Colleges and Certificate Programs for Nontraditional Students. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2013; 27(2): 153–172.
• Janet Rosenbaum, Ralph DiClemente, Eve Rose, Gina Wingood, Jonathan Zenilman. Do jobs work? Risk and protective behaviors associated with employment among disadvantaged female teens in urban Atlanta. Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy. 2014 Jan 1;35(2):155–173.
• Janet Rosenbaum, Johan Melendez, Eve Rose, Gina Wingood, Ralph DiClemente, Jonathan Zenilman. Telling truth from Ys: An evaluation of whether the accuracy of self-reported semen exposure assessed by a semen Y-chromosome biomarker predicts pregnancy in a longitudinal cohort study of pregnancy. BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections. 2014 Sep;90(6):479–84
• Matthew R Boylan, Janet Rosenbaum, Adam Adler, Qais Naziri, and Carl B. Paulino. Hip Fracture and the Weekend Effect: Does Weekend Admission Affect Patient Outcomes? American Journal of Orthopedics. 2015 Oct;44(10):458–64.
• Janet Rosenbaum, Jonathan Zenilman, Eve Rose, Gina Wingood, Ralph DiClemente. Predicting unprotected sex and unplanned pregnancy among urban African-American adolescent girls using the Theory of Gender and Power. Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine. 2016; 93(3):493–510.
• Janet Rosenbaum, Jonathan Zenilman, Eve Rose, Gina Wingood, Ralph DiClemente. Semen says: Assessing the accuracy of adolescents self-reported sexual abstinence using a semen Y-chromosome biomarker. BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections. 2017 Mar;93(2):145-147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/sextrans-2016-052605
• Janet Rosenbaum, James Rosenbaum. Money isn't everything: job satisfaction, nonmonetary job re- wards, and sub-baccalaureate credentials. Research in Higher Education Journal. 2016;30.  http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/162430.pdf
• Janet Rosenbaum. Predicting educational attainments of young adults from their health status during college: A longitudinal study of students in community college and four-year college. Community College Review. In Press, April 2018.
• Janet Rosenbaum. Graduating into Lower Risk: Chlamydia and Trichomonas Prevalence among Community College Students and Graduates. Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice. In Press.
• Janet Rosenbaum. Educational and criminal justice outcomes 12 years after school suspension. Youth and Society. January 17, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X17752208

Recent media links:

• Israel’s gun control laws can make the US safer, too.  NY Post, February 15, 2018.  https://nypost.com/2018/02/15/israels-gun-control-laws-can-make-the-us-safer-too/
• Janet Rosenbaum: The Effect of School Suspensions on Life Outcomes by University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education CPRE Knowledge Hub via #soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/cpre-knowledgehub/janet-rosenbaum

Retrieve pubmed results: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=janet+rosenbaum

Orcid results: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9796-513X