Neighborhood environments have an impact on breast cancer risk, according to a study involving nearly 6,000 individuals.

Participants included women with breast cancer (n=2,838) and controls (n=3,117). Investigators looked at the role education and neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES)—including social and built environmental characteristics—played in breast cancer risk. Among the results:

• Women in the highest nSES quintile were nearly twice as likely to have breast cancer than those in the lowest quintile.
• Whites in the highest quintile were more than twice as likely to have breast cancer than whites in the lowest quintile; blacks and Hispanics had nearly twice the risk.
• Considering education and nSES jointly, increases were seen for low education/high nSES whites, high education/high nSES whites, and high education/high nSES foreign-born Hispanics relative to their race/ethnicity/nativity-specific low education/low nSES counterparts.
• Adjusting for urban and mixed-land use characteristics weakened the links for all racial/ethnic/nativity groups except whites.