Dr. Braithwaite’s research is focused on the intersection of cancer and aging, with the overarching goal of advancing and applying knowledge about aging to cancer population science. The overall goal is to encourage a more individualized approach to cancer screening and care among older adults.

Dr. Braithwaite has extensive experience, expertise, and leadership in large-scale multi-disciplinary NIH-funded efforts of breast and lung cancer screening, risk factors and outcomes, including the R01 Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC), R01 Personalized Lung Cancer Screening Network (PLuS), P50 UCSF Breast Cancer SPORE and P30 UCSF Center for Aging in Diverse Communities. As PI or investigator on several of these grants, she has developed cohorts of individuals at risk for invasive cancer and developed comprehensive databases that include pathologic, clinical, biomarker, and risk factor data, as well as follow-up for subsequent disease and death. She has performed multiple epidemiologic studies where she was able to stratify older adults at risk for or diagnosed with cancer into distinct health categories associated with substantially different life expectancies. These studies have been cited by guideline panels, such as the American Cancer Society, the US Preventive Service Taskforce and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Currently, she leads two large multi-site projects that integrate longitudinal cohort data with simulation modeling to determine the benefits and harms of screening for breast and lung cancers in older adults across the levels of advancing age, comorbid conditions and functional status. This work is poised to inform precision screening policy and clinical decision making among older population subgroups for whom the net benefits of screening are currently highly uncertain.