Neighborhood disadvantage tied to shorter breast cancer-specific survival

Neighborhood disadvantage is associated with shorter breast cancer-specific survival, according to a study published online April 18 in JAMA Network Open.

Neha Goel, M.D., M.P.H., from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and colleagues examined whether neighborhood disadvantage is associated with shorter breast cancer-specific survival in a national retrospective cohort study involving patients with breast cancer diagnosed from 2013 to 2018. Data were included for 350,824 patients with breast cancer.

Overall, 25.0 and 14.9% of patients lived in the most advantaged and most disadvantaged neighborhoods, respectively. A larger number of non-Hispanic White patients lived in advantaged neighborhoods (76.2%), while the highest proportion of non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic patients was seen in disadvantaged neighborhoods (30.9 and 19.5%, respectively). Compared with the most advantaged neighborhoods, the most disadvantaged neighborhoods had the highest risk for mortality in a breast cancer-specific survival analysis (hazard ratio, 1.43).

"To address these residual disparities associated with neighborhood disadvantage, future research must take a translational epidemiologic approach to focus on biological and nonbiological factors through which the built environment, above the beyond individual-level factors, may influence outcomes," the authors write.

"This approach to research has the potential to advance precision medicine in oncology by bringing neighborhood disadvantage into consideration when risk-stratifying vulnerable populations and to develop cancer control interventions to overcome breast cancer disparities."

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