# Assessing residential neighborhood exposome exposures and the associations with cancer incidence

> **NIH NIH R01** · VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $324,914

## Abstract

Colorectal, lung, and female breast cancers are major public health burdens and there are clear geographic
and racial/ethnic disparities in their incidence. Each of these cancers has been linked to neighborhood factors
including socioeconomic deprivation, the built environment, and environmental pollutants in attempts to explain
existing disparities in risk. While associations exist, most previous studies considered neighborhood exposures
at only one time (e.g., time of diagnosis) and used only single measures of neighborhood exposures (e.g.,
neighborhood deprivation or singular environmental pollutants), which is a simplification of the multifactorial
nature of cancer. As a result, the relative importance of exposure domains is unknown, effects may be
underestimated, and a cumulative assessment of risk factors is lacking. Increasing interest in the exposome
calls for a more thorough assessment of neighborhood exposures over time that could better explain the
factors leading to disparities in cancers. Therefore, we propose to study comprehensive neighborhood
disadvantage (ND), a combination of socioeconomic deprivation, racial segregation, environmental pollutant,
and built environment domains, to provide stronger evidence of neighborhood associations and identify risk
factors that could be modified to eliminate geographic and racial cancer disparities. The important limitations of
existing work that this proposal overcomes are 1) the temporality and extent of exposures (i.e., earlier life
exposure, later life exposure, or cumulative lifetime exposure), 2) the identification of key neighborhood
exposure variables for cancer incidence, and 3) consideration of different domains of the neighborhood
exposome over time both independently and in combination to more comprehensively consider relationships
with cancer. Our specific aims are to estimate exposure effects for ND domains over time and study the
trajectories of these domain exposures and effects by cancer site, race, and sex. We will bring together data
from the Virginia and Pennsylvania state cancer registries, population-based controls, residential histories, and
exposure data documenting historical disadvantage indicators. Highly innovative aspects of our approach
include: 1) examination of historical levels of exposure to several important neighborhood disadvantage
domains and 2) the application of novel Bayesian statistical methods that our team has been refining for
estimating neighborhood disadvantage and its effects. We hypothesize that our novel approaches to estimating
neighborhood disadvantage will better explain variation in cancer incidence than existing methods and will
identify the most influential exposure variables over time for each cancer. This study is highly significant as it is
the first study to estimate neighborhood disadvantage effects for multiple cancers that considers cumulative
risk from several historic exposure domains using residential histories. The expected ou...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10884922
- **Project number:** 5R01CA277780-02
- **Recipient organization:** VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Resa M. Jones
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $324,914
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-07-08 → 2028-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10884922

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10884922, Assessing residential neighborhood exposome exposures and the associations with cancer incidence (5R01CA277780-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10884922. Licensed CC0.

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