Place and Health

Place matters—where you live, work and play impacts opportunities for health promotion and disease prevention above and beyond individual factors.

A central focus for the DreamLab is investigating the impact of neighborhood, including social, built and physical environments, on outcomes across the cancer control continuum. We apply innovative methods to measure and examine neighborhood-health associations with population health (cancer registry), cohort (Multiethnic cohorts, Pathways breast cancer survivor cohort) clinical and community data.

Sample Publications

The California Neighborhoods Data System: a new resource for examining the impact of neighborhood characteristics on cancer incidence and outcomes in populations

Colorectal cancer incidence in Asian populations in California: effect of nativity and neighborhood-level factors

The Impact of Neighborhood Social and Built Environment Factors across the Cancer Continuum: Current Research, Methodologic Considerations, and Future Directions

Contribution of the Neighborhood Environment and Obesity to Breast Cancer Survival: The California Breast Cancer Survivorship Consortium

Impact of social and built environment factors on body size among breast cancer survivors: the Pathways Study

Characterizing the neighborhood obesogenic environment in the Multiethnic Cohort: a multi-level infrastructure for cancer health disparities research

Podcast

Can Social and Evironmental Factors Cause Cancer Disparities?
Scarlett Gomez gives overview of cancer disparites in podcast featured in Cancer Network