Jenny Spencer, Ph.D.

Jenny Spencer’s work uses econometric and decision science methods to focus on improving health equity in cancer screening and prevention. Spencer completed her master’s and Ph.D. training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a predoctoral fellow in the Cancer Care Quality Training Program at the Lineberger Cancer Center. Her dissertation, which focused on modeling the impact of HPV vaccination on disparities in HPV cancers by area poverty in the U.S., was awarded the Marci Campbell Award for Excellence in Cancer Population Sciences.

After completing her Ph.D., Spencer completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with the Training in Oncology Population Sciences program at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard School of Public Health, where she continued her work in developing HPV vaccination models and strategies to incorporate equity considerations into decision modeling.

Spencer joined the Department of Population Health in 2021, where she has expanded her work on HPV vaccination to additionally study inequities in cancer screening and cancer prevention — including cervical, breast and colorectal cancer — by race, ethnicity, income and sexual orientation.