The Pre2 CAP laboratory’s work was featured in a recent story in Stat News describing growing interest in understanding mechanisms linking neighborhood environments and social stressors to health.
Our lab has led studies examining associations of neighborhood environments with tumor histology and somatic alterations, finding that favorable neighborhood environments may be associated with lower prevalence of certain pre-cancerous pathologic lesions, but not with somatic alterations (mutations in the tumor in key carcinogenic genes).
There are a number of challenges with interpreting these findings, the most obvious being that men living in disadvantaged neighborhoods have many differences from men living in advantaged neighborhoods (behavioral, access barriers, socioeconomic factors) that may influence their tumor progression, and not all of these factors can be measured reliably in a single study. Another challenge is that these data on tumor markers often are only available in men who already have been diagnosed with cancer – and so we can’t really comment on whether neighborhood exposures directly impacted the development of the cancer (because we are looking after that process has been completed). Lastly, our measures of neighborhood are often limited by the geographic scale and time period – often assessed only at a single landmark time point like diagnosis, and only at a single residential address for the participant. However, studies like this can still help motivate more focused studies and experiments to test potential mechanisms through which environment and stress can influence cancer risk.
An example of translational research in this space is the use of “green prescriptions” for patients recovering from illness, where patients are advised to spend more time in nature, leading to psychological and cardiovascular benefits. In addition, focusing on specific mechanisms, such as barriers to health care access, can help inform interventions to reduce burden of prostate and other cancers. We are excited to continue making contributions to this exciting area of research.