Kim N. Danforth

Kim Danforth is a member of RTI’s Health Care Quality and Outcomes Center. She is an epidemiologist and health services researcher whose work has primarily focused on cancer and outpatient safety. She has led mixed methods and cohort studies focused on etiology, care quality, diagnostic error, guideline-concordant care, and disparities in diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Danforth’s work at RTI has included our Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Program Analysis and Operational Support project, which supports a payment model aimed at promoting high-quality care and improving health through coordinated care. She also has led work using Artificial Intelligence to improve the public comment review process, as well as to extract bladder cancer recurrence from free-text notes for epidemiologic and health services research.

Throughout her career, Dr. Danforth’s primary focus has been on applying her research and analytic skills to address questions of real-world significance. She collaborated closely with clinical and operational leaders at a large, integrated health care system to apply research findings to improve care (e.g., helping create a new electronic health record order set and a new internal treatment guidance document). She also has synthesized research evidence for review chapters and evidence reports to promote the use and application of research findings.

Dr. Danforth joined RTI in 2019. Previously, she was a research scientist at the Southern California Permanente Medical Group in Pasadena, California. She also completed fellowships at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, and the California Epidemiologic Investigation Service, California Department of Health Services.