{"doi":"10.1289/ehp11538","title":"Long-Term Exposure to Walkable Residential Neighborhoods and Risk of Obesity-Related Cancer in the New York University Women’s Health Study (NYUWHS)","abstract":"Background: Living in neighborhoods with higher levels of walkability has been associated with a reduced risk of obesity and higher levels of physical activity. Obesity has been linked to increased risk of 13 cancers in women. However, long-term prospective studies of neighborhood walkability and risk for obesity-related cancer are scarce. Objectives: We evaluated the association between long-term average neighborhood walkability and obesity-related cancer risk in women. Methods: The New York University Women’s Health Study (NYUWHS) is a prospective cohort with 14,274 women recruited between 1985 and 1991 in New York City and followed over nearly three decades. We geocoded residential addresses for each participant throughout follow-up and calculated an average annual measure of neighborhood walkability across years of follow-up using data on population density and accessibility to destinations associated with geocoded residential addresses. We used ICD-9 codes to characterize first primary obesity-related cancers and employed Cox proportional hazards models to assess the association between average neighborhood walkability and risk of overall and site-specific obesity-related cancers. Results: Residing in neighborhoods with a higher walkability level was associated with a reduced risk of overall and site-specific obesity-related cancers. The hazards ratios associated with a 1-standard deviation increase in average annual neighborhood walkability were 0.88 (95% CI: 0.85, 0.93) for overall obesity-related cancer, 0.89 (95% CI: 0.84, 0.95) for postmenopausal breast cancer, 0.82 (95% CI: 0.68, 0.99) for ovarian cancer, 0.87 (95% CI: 0.76, 0.99) for endometrial cancer, and 0.68 (95% CI: 0.49, 0.94) for multiple myeloma, adjusting for potential confounders at both the individual and neighborhood level. The association between neighborhood walkability and risk of overall obesity-related cancer was stronger among women living in neighborhoods with higher levels of poverty compared with women living in areas with lower poverty levels (pInteraction=0.006). Discussion: Our study highlights a potential protective role of neighborhood walkability in preventing obesity-related cancers in women. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP11538","journal":"Environmental Health Perspectives","year":2023,"id":358735,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9367,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":107946,"name":"Andrew Rundle","orcid":"0000-0003-0211-7707","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":870121,"name":"James W. Quinn","orcid":"0000-0002-5987-3872","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":790166,"name":"Tess V. Clendenen","orcid":"0000-0003-4170-6977","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":329105,"name":"Yelena Afanasyeva","orcid":"0000-0001-9760-2697","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":790168,"name":"Karen L. Koenig","orcid":"0000-0001-8341-8442","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":329106,"name":"Mengling Liu","orcid":"0000-0001-9758-8522","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":541077,"name":"Kathryn M. Neckerman","orcid":"0000-0001-5163-4714","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":389936,"name":"Lorna E. Thorpe","orcid":"0000-0002-5535-2674","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":302480,"name":"Anne Zeleniuch‐Jacquotte","orcid":"0000-0001-9350-1303","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":302468,"name":"Yu Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-1519-4894","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":945272,"name":"Sandra India‐Aldana","orcid":"0000-0003-3754-6691","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":99,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:13:48.379546Z","pmid":"37791759","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}