Rural Residence and Cancer Outcomes in the United States: Issues and Challenges

"Neighborhoods and health" research has shown that area social factors are associated with the health outcomes that patients with cancer experience across the cancer control continuum. To date, most of this research has been focused on the attributes of urban areas that are associated with...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention biomarkers & prevention, 2013-10, Vol.22 (10), p.1657-1667
Main Authors: MEILLEUR, Ashley, SUBRAMANIAN, S. V, PLASCAK, Jesse J, FISHER, James L, PASKETT, Electra D, LAMONT, Elizabeth B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Health Services Accessibility - statistics & numerical data
Healthcare Disparities - statistics & numerical data
Humans
Medical sciences
Multiple tumors. Solid tumors. Tumors in childhood (general aspects)
Neoplasms - epidemiology
Neoplasms - therapy
Rural Population - statistics & numerical data
Social Environment
Tumors
United States - epidemiology
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Summary:"Neighborhoods and health" research has shown that area social factors are associated with the health outcomes that patients with cancer experience across the cancer control continuum. To date, most of this research has been focused on the attributes of urban areas that are associated with residents' poor cancer outcomes with less focused on attributes of rural areas that may be associated with the same. Perhaps because there is not yet a consensus in the United States regarding how to define "rural," there is not yet an accepted analytic convention for studying issues of how patients' cancer outcomes may vary according to "rural" as a contextual attribute. The research that exists reports disparate findings and generally treats rural residence as a patient attribute rather than a contextual factor, making it difficult to understand what factors (e.g., unmeasured individual poverty, area social deprivation, area health care scarcity) may be mediating the poor outcomes associated with rural (or non-rural) residence. Here, we review literature regarding the potential importance of rural residence on cancer patients' outcomes in the United States with an eye towards identifying research conventions (i.e., spatial and analytic) that may be useful for future research in this important area.
ISSN:1055-9965
1538-7755
DOI:10.1158/1055-9965.epi-13-0404