Walkable areas reduce the risk of cancers in women linked to obesity.
According to a new study conducted by the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and NYU Grossman School of Medicine, living in a more walkable neighborhood lowers the risk of all obesity-related cancers in women, specifically postmenopausal breast cancer but also ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, and multiple myeloma. Physical activity, regardless of body size, lowers risk for some of these malignancies. Obesity has been associated to an elevated risk for 13 forms of cancer in women. Neighborhood walkability is a combination of urban design elements that improves general physical activity, encourages pedestrian activity, and is linked to a lower BMI. There haven't been a good deal of long-term research on neighborhood walkability and the likelihood of developing cancer linked to obesity, though. The results are released in the Environmental Health journal.
Over roughly 24 years of follow-up, women who lived in neighborhoods with higher walkability levels—as determined by average destination accessibility and population density—had a decreased risk of obesity-related malignancies, including postmenopausal breast cancer. However, mildly protective relationships were also discovered for multiple myeloma, ovarian cancer, and endometrial cancer. Women who resided in communities with the greatest levels of neighborhood walkability (the top 25% of walkability) had a 26 percent lower risk of obesity-related malignancies than those who did not.
According to Andrew Bundle, DPH, professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, “These results add to the growing evidence of how urban design affects the health and wellbeing of aging Bundle and associates discovered that interventions targeting individuals to encourage physical activity and combat obesity tend to be costly and often yield only short-lived results. Nevertheless, urban planning and design have the potential to foster walking, boost overall physical activity, and reduce reliance on cars, potentially resulting in improved prevention of diseases linked to an unhealthy lifestyle weight,” Bundle said.
Between 1985 and 1991, the researchers monitored 14,274 women between the ages of 34 and 65 who were recruited at a mammography screening facility in New York City. They assessed the relationship between neighborhood walkability and risk of both general and site-specific obesity-related cancers, such as postmenopausal breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, and multiple myeloma.They assessed the walkability of the neighborhood where the participants resided throughout the follow-up period. By the end of 2016, 18% of all the women who were followed had developed their first case of an obesity-related malignancy. Postmenopausal breast cancer accounted for 53% of all cancer cases, with colorectal cancer coming in at 14% and endometrial cancer at 12%.
“Our study stands out due to the extended duration of our follow-up, enabling us to examine the impact of walkability as participants moved across the country," explained co-author Yu Chen, Ph.D., from NYU Medical Science.
Along with Mengling Liu and Lorna Thorpe from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Langone Health, Tess Clendenen, Yelena Afanasyeva, Karen Koenig, and Anne Zeleniuch-Jacquotte from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, James W. Quinn from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and Kathryn Neckerman from the Columbia University Population Research Center are also co-authors.