Men with prostate cancer from poorest neighborhoods much less likely to survive than men from most affluent neighborhoods

Among older men with prostate cancer, those living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods were 38 percent more likely to die from their cancer during the years 2008 to 2017 than men living in the least disadvantaged neighborhoods. Men in the poorer neighborhoods were more likely to be Black.

Cary Gross (above) of Yale University and his colleagues analyzed the medical records of nearly 100,000 Medicare patients diagnosed with cancer between 2008 and 2011 and tracked who survived through 2017. The patients were linked on a spectrum covering the most affluent to the most deprived neighborhoods.

“Such disparities persisted even after accounting for demographic, clinical, pathological, and treatment factors. Policies for ongoing investments in low-resource neighborhoods and low-income households are needed to improve cancer outcomes and reduce health disparities,” Gross and the other researchers concluded.

See the full text of the scientific paper “Neighborhood and Individual Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Survival Among Patients With Nonmetastatic Common Cancers” by En Cheng et al. (December 17, 2021)