Dr. Bradley Willcox
Professor and Director of Research | Department of Geriatric Medicine, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii
Honolulu , HI, UNITED STATES
Dr. Willcox is also an author of a NY Times best-selling book on healthy aging
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Biography
Dr. Willcox is a Professor and Director of Research at the Department of Geriatric Medicine, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, at the Kuakini Medical Center (KMC) Campus. He is also a Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded Kuakini Hawaii LIFESPAN and HEALTHSPAN Studies and co-Principal Investigator of the Okinawa Centenarian Study. He is also active clinically as a Physician co-Leader of the Long Term Care Hospitalist Service at The Queens Medical Center. Dr. Willcox trained in Medicine at the University of Toronto, Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, and Geriatric Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Willcox has published widely in the genetic, environmental and clinical aspects of healthy aging, is on the Editorial Board of the Journals of Gerontology, the leading gerontological journal. He has been recognized with a Dorothy Dillon Eweson Award for Advances in Aging Research, the Henry Christian Award from the American Federation for Medical Research, and a Director’s Citation from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
He is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and a three-time nominee for Outstanding Physician of the Year at The Queen’s Medical Center. Dr. Willcox is also an author of a NY Times best-selling book on healthy aging, The Okinawa Program, and his work has appeared in cover articles of Time Magazine, National Geographic, and on Oprah, Good Morning America, NOVA Science, BBC, among other media.
Areas of Expertise (3)
Long Term Care
Geriatric Medicine
Internal Medicine
Education (1)
University of Calgary: M.Sc., Neuroscience
Languages (1)
- English
Media Appearances (5)
Eating your way to Health and Longevity
Hawaii Reporter online
2016-01-11
As a geriatrician, most of my time is spent attending to folks who suffer from the diseases of old age. Whether it’s heart disease, arthritis, cognitive decline, diabetes or macular degeneration, these are almost always chronic in nature. However, there’s a silver lining to this dreary cloud. Most of the afflictions I treat can be largely prevented by a healthy diet, exercise, and other lifestyle factors...
Hawaii is a hub for healthy aging research
Hawaii Reporter online
2015-12-26
University of Hawaii researcher Bradley Willcox, a Canadian-born physician, is quite certain he lives in paradise. It’s not the beaches, the weather or the surfing that has this geriatrician so enthralled. Willcox, one of the world’s experts on healthy aging, came here from Harvard University 13 years ago for one reason: Hawaii has the highest percentage of healthy seniors in the nation, and he wanted to study them. When he’s not making his rounds at the Queen’s Medical Center, he is principal investigator of several studies funded by the National Institute on Aging at the Kuakini Honolulu Heart Program...
Food for thought: A traditional Okinawan diet may help prolong life
The Japan Times online
2015-12-12
The benefits derived from the combination of a vital, unique culture, warm climate and the special features of its cuisine are well documented. The authors of the best-selling book, “The Okinawa Program,” gerontologists Bradley Willcox and Makoto Suzuki, and medical anthropologist Craig Willcox, based their study of the link between diet and longevity on 25 years of research. Nowhere is that connection more evident than in the village of Ogimi, in the far north of mainland Okinawa...
Genes, diet, optimism... Secrets of a centenarian
Yahoo! News online
2015-05-29
The hereditary transmission of a longevity gene has long been studied. Bradley Willcox, an Investigator at the Pacific Health Research and Education Institute (PHREI) in Hawaii, in a study published in the PLOS ONE journal of May 7, 2014, discovered a gene called FOXO3A of which one variety can double or triple the probability of its carrier living past 100...
Should I Eat Tofu?
TIME online
2015-02-19
It’s been a staple in Asian populations for thousands of years. “The traditional Okinawan diet provided among the world’s largest intake of tofu, and Okinawans not only have lived the longest—with the least disability—but have had among the lowest heart disease, breast, prostate and colon cancer and dementia rates in the world,” says Dr. Bradley Willcox, a principal investigator with the Okinawa Centenarian Study and director of research in the department of geriatric medicine at the University of Hawaii...
Featured Articles (5)
Prostate cancer screening in the randomized Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial: mortality results after 13 years of follow-up
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
2012 The prostate component of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial was undertaken to determine whether there is a reduction in prostate cancer mortality from screening using serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing and digital rectal examination (DRE)...
Reduced lung-cancer mortality with low-dose computed tomographic screening
The New England Journal of Medicine
2011 The aggressive and heterogeneous nature of lung cancer has thwarted efforts to reduce mortality from this cancer through the use of screening. The advent of low-dose helical computed tomography (CT) altered the landscape of lung-cancer screening, with studies indicating that low-dose CT detects many tumors at early stages...
Body-mass index and mortality among 1.46 million white adults
The New England Journal of Medicine
2010 A high body-mass index (BMI, the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) is associated with increased mortality from cardiovascular disease and certain cancers, but the precise relationship between BMI and all-cause mortality remains uncertain...
Mortality results from a randomized prostate-cancer screening trial
The New England Journal of Medicine
2009 The effect of screening with prostate-specific–antigen (PSA) testing and digital rectal examination on the rate of death from prostate cancer is unknown. This is the first report from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial on prostate-cancer mortality...
Effect of Difficulty Levels on Second-Grade Delayed Readers Using Dyad Reading
The Journal of Educational Research
2000 The authors investigated how far above a poor reader's instructional level dyad reading should be used to promote the greatest growth in reading level, word recognition, comprehension, and rate...