����Vlog�ٷ� Cambridge: Dr Francisca Stutzin Donoso

Position Governing Body Fellow Junior Research Fellow
School Clinical Medicine Department of Public Health and Primary Care
Email fsd26@cam.ac.uk
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Francisca’s research explores how people negotiate risk-based decisions for health and wellbeing, offering deeper insight into the complex dynamics shaping the spaces between the offer, uptake, and outcomes of healthcare interventions such as cancer risk assessments, screening programmes, and long-term treatments.

Originally from Santiago, Chile, Francisca trained as a psychologist at Universidad Diego Portales. Her clinical work with underserved communities motivated a lasting interest in how social contexts shape health and wellbeing. Supported by an honours scholarship, she completed a master’s in philosophy, reinforcing her commitment to linking social values and public health.

In 2015, she moved to London to pursue an MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Health at UCL, where she discovered a passion for interdisciplinary health research. After a stint as a Junior Research Fellow in Social Studies in Health in Chile, she returned to UCL in 2017 to begin her PhD. Her research on chronic illness included a six-month ethnography in two NHS hospitals, working closely with patients and clinicians to understand the complexities of long-term care. This work has been published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, BMJ Medical Humanities, Public Health Ethics, and in the OUP volume titled Crisis, Inequity, and Legacy: Narrative Analyses of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In 2021, Francisca joined the University of Cambridge as a postdoctoral research associate on a Cancer Research UK–funded project, focusing on the implementation of breast cancer risk assessment across clinical settings.

Francisca’s current research focuses on clinicians and the public's views on breast cancer risk prediction tools and how they can be integrated into everyday clinical practice. This includes looking into how risk is communicated and understood, how to support shared decision-making, understanding why people may want/not want to learn about their breast cancer risk, and working with stakeholders in the design and development of digital tools for risk factor collection. Her work has been published in the Journal of Community Genetics, the British Journal of General Practice, and the British Journal of Cancer.

Since 2024, she is a co-investigator in the Cancer Research UK - International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED) project titled PREVENT-Breast. This explores the views of women from underserved backgrounds about breast cancer risk and prevention.

Teaching and mentorship are central to Francisca’s work. She taught Medical Humanities students throughout her PhD at UCL, and supervised Psychology and History & Philosophy of Science students at Cambridge. She is currently a PhD supervisor and convenes the Qualitative Research Forum at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care. At ��Vlog�ٷ�, Francisca is a PhD mentor and member of the Student Welfare and Wellbeing Committee.

Her monograph on stories of illness and health justice is currently in production and will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2026.