Impact of the built, social, and food environment on long-term weight loss within a behavioral weight loss intervention.

Background: Behavioral weight loss interventions can lead to an average weight loss of 5%-10% of initial body weight, however there is wide individual variability in treatment response. Although built, social, and community food environments can have potential direct and indirect influences on body weight (through their influence on physical activity and energy intake), these environmental factors are rarely considered as predictors of variation in weight loss.

Objective: Evaluate the association between built, social, and community food environments and changes in weight, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and dietary intake among adults who completed an 18-month behavioral weight loss intervention.

Developing Geographic Areas for Cancer Reporting Using Automated Zone Design.

The reporting and analysis of population-based cancer statistics in the United States has traditionally been done for counties. However, counties are not ideal for analysis of cancer rates, due to wide variation in population size, with larger counties having considerable sociodemographic variation within their borders and sparsely populated counties having less reliable estimates of cancer rates that are often suppressed due to confidentiality concerns. There is a need and an opportunity to utilize zone design procedures in the context of cancer surveillance to generate coherent, statistically stable geographic units that are more optimal for cancer reporting and analysis than counties.

Environmental data and methods from the Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict Obesity Treatment (ADOPT) core measures environmental working group.

This article describes geospatial datasets and exemplary data across five environmental domains (walkability, socioeconomic deprivation, urbanicity, personal safety, and food outlet accessibility). The environmental domain is one of four domains (behavioral, biological, environmental and psychosocial) in which the Accumulating Data to Optimally Predict obesity Treatment (ADOPT) Core Measures Project suggested measures to help explain variation in responses to weight loss interventions. These data are intended to facilitate additional research on potential environmental moderators of responses to weight loss, physical activity, or diet related interventions.

Assessment of Interstate Residential Mobility of SEER Patients: SEER and LexisNexis Residential Address Linkage.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program is continuously exploring opportunities to augment its already extensive collection of data, enhance the quality of reported cancer information, and contribute to more comprehensive analyses of cancer burden. This manuscript describes a recent linkage of the LexisNexis longitudinal residential history data with 11 SEER registries and provides estimates of the inter-state mobility of SEER cancer patients. To identify mobility from one state to another, we used state postal abbreviations to generate state-level residential histories.

Effects of Buffer Size and Shape on the Association of Neighborhood SES and Adult Fruit and Vegetable Consumption.

Neighborhood environment factors are relevant for dietary behaviors, but associations between home neighborhood context and disease prevention behaviors vary depending on the definition of neighborhood. The present study uses a publicly available dataset to examine whether associations between neighborhood socioeconomic status (NSES) and fruit/vegetable (FV) consumption vary when NSES is defined by different neighborhood sizes and shapes. We analyzed data from 1,736 adults with data in GeoFLASHE, a geospatial extension of the National Cancer Institute's Family Life, Activity, Sun, Health, and Eating Study (FLASHE).

A national examination of neighborhood socio-economic disparities in built environment correlates of youth physical activity.

Adolescents in the U.S. do not meet current physical activity guidelines.

Providing Higher Resolution Indicators of Rurality in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Database: Implications for Patient Privacy and Research.

Background: The burden of cancer is higher in rural areas than urban areas. The NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database currently provides county-level information on rurality for cancer patients in its catchment area, but more nuanced measures of rurality would improve etiologic and surveillance studies.

Methods: We analyzed disclosure risk and conducted a sample utility analysis of census tract-level measures of rurality, using (1) U.

GIScience and cancer: State of the art and trends for cancer surveillance and epidemiology.

Maps are well recognized as an effective means of presenting and communicating health data, such as cancer incidence and mortality rates. These data can be linked to geographic features like counties or census tracts and their associated attributes for mapping and analysis. Such visualization and analysis provide insights regarding the geographic distribution of cancer and can be important for advancing effective cancer prevention and control programs.

A geo-view into historical patterns of smoke-free policy coverage in the USA.

Introduction: Ample evidence shows that implementation of smoke-free policies can significantly reduce tobacco use. The indoor smoke-free policy coverage in the U.S.

Using Gini coefficient to determining optimal cluster reporting sizes for spatial scan statistics.

Background: Spatial and space-time scan statistics are widely used in disease surveillance to identify geographical areas of elevated disease risk and for the early detection of disease outbreaks. With a scan statistic, a scanning window of variable location and size moves across the map to evaluate thousands of overlapping windows as potential clusters, adjusting for the multiple testing. Almost always, the method will find many very similar overlapping clusters, and it is not useful to report all of them.

The relationship between area poverty rate and site-specific cancer incidence in the United States.

Background: The relationship between socioeconomic status and cancer incidence in the United States has not traditionally been a focus of population-based cancer surveillance systems.

Methods: Nearly 3 million tumors diagnosed between 2005 and 2009 from 16 states plus Los Angeles were assigned into 1 of 4 groupings based on the poverty rate of the residential census tract at time of diagnosis. The sex-specific risk ratio of the highest-to-lowest poverty category was measured using Poisson regression, adjusting for age and race, for 39 cancer sites.

Confidence intervals for ranks of age-adjusted rates across states or counties.

Health indices provide information to the general public on the health condition of the community. They can also be used to inform the government's policy making, to evaluate the effect of a current policy or healthcare program, or for program planning and priority setting. It is a common practice that the health indices across different geographic units are ranked and the ranks are reported as fixed values.

Multilevel predictors of colorectal cancer screening use in California.

Background: Screening can detect colorectal cancer (CRC) early, yet its uptake needs to be improved. Social determinants of health (SDOH) may be linked to CRC screening use but are not well understood.

Objectives: To examine geographic variation in CRC screening and the extent to which multilevel SDOH explain its use in California, the most populous and racially/ethnically diverse state in the United States.

U.S. geographic distribution of prevaccine era cervical cancer screening, incidence, stage, and mortality.

Background: Cervical cancer prevention programs are being reconfigured to incorporate human papillomavirus (HPV) testing and vaccination. To define priority areas for prevention efforts, we examined the geographic distribution of cervical cancer screening, incidence, stage, and mortality in the United States, prior to the introduction of HPV-based prevention technologies.

Methods: County-level cervical cancer incidence data from 37 central registries were obtained from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results and North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

Identifying clusters of active transportation using spatial scan statistics.

Background: There is an intense interest in the possibility that neighborhood characteristics influence active transportation such as walking or biking. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a spatial cluster identification method can evaluate the geographic variation of active transportation and identify neighborhoods with unusually high/low levels of active transportation.

Methods: Self-reported walking/biking prevalence, demographic characteristics, street connectivity variables, and neighborhood socioeconomic data were collected from respondents to the 2001 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS; N=10,688) in Los Angeles County (LAC) and San Diego County (SDC).

The impact of underreported Veterans Affairs data on national cancer statistics: analysis using population-based SEER registries.

Reduced cancer reporting by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals in 2007 (for patients diagnosed through 2005) impacted the most recent US cancer surveillance data. To quantify the impact of the reduced VA reporting on cancer incidence and trends produced by the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program, we estimated numbers of missing VA patients in 2005 by sex, age, race, selected cancer sites, and registry and calculated adjustment factors to correct for the 2005 incidence rates and trends. Based on our adjustment factors, we estimated that as a result of the underreporting, the overall cancer burden was underestimated by 1.

Cervical cancer incidence in the United States in the US-Mexico border region, 1998-2003.

Background: Cervical cancer mortality rates have declined in the United States, primarily because of Papanicolaou testing. However, limited information is available about the incidence of the disease in the US-Mexico border region, where some of the poorest counties in the United States are located. This study was undertaken to help compare the patterns of cervical cancer incidence among women in the US-Mexico border region and other parts of the United States.

Detection of spatial clusters: application to cancer survival as a continuous outcome.

In this article, we develop the first detailed illustration of the use of a cluster detection method using a spatial scan statistic based on an exponential survival model. We use this approach to study the spatial patterns of survival of patients with stage III or stage IV colorectal cancer or with stage I/II, stage III, or stage IV lung cancer in the State of California and the County of Los Angeles (LA) diagnosed during 1988 through 2002. We present the location of the detected clusters of short survival or long survival and compute nonparametric estimates of survival inside and outside of those detected clusters confirming the survival pattern detected by the spatial scan statistic in both areas.

The crossroads of GIS and health information: a workshop on developing a research agenda to improve cancer control.

Cancer control researchers seek to reduce the burden of cancer by studying interventions, their impact in defined populations, and the means by which they can be better used. The first step in cancer control is identifying where the cancer burden is elevated, which suggests locations where interventions are needed. Geographic information systems (GIS) and other spatial analytic methods provide such a solution and thus can play a major role in cancer control.

Maternal exposure to arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury and neural tube defects in offspring.

Arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury are neurotoxins, and some studies suggest that these elements might also be teratogens. Using a case-control study design, we investigated the relation between exposure to these heavy metals and neural tube defects (NTDs) in offspring of Mexican-American women living in 1 of the 14 Texas counties bordering Mexico. A total of 184 case-women with NTD-affected pregnancies and 225 control-women with normal live births were interviewed about their environmental and occupational exposures during the periconceptional period.

Reduced incidence of hip fracture in the Old Order Amish.

Unlabelled: The incidence of hip fracture was estimated in a community of Old Order Amish and compared with available data from non-Amish whites. Hip fracture rates were 40% lower in the Amish, and the Amish also experienced higher BMD.

Introduction: Understanding the patterns of fracture risk across populations could reveal insights about bone health and lead to the earlier detection and prevention of osteoporosis.