Purpose
This Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) seeks to highlight the interest of NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences to support investigation of the role of individual Residential Histories - a record of an individual’s places of residence over the life course - relative to cancer risk, etiology, prevention, treatment, and outcomes.
Background
There is a growing recognition of the importance of residential histories in cancer research, as part of evolving cancer data ecosystem. Residential history encapsulates a person’s multiple interactions with the social and physical environment that can result in lasting health impact. Incorporating residential history records into cancer research can enhance our understanding of the variety of potential and actual exposures throughout person’s life that may lead to cancer and affect cancer outcomes, such as: neighborhood sociodemographic and physical conditions, poverty and social deprivation, accessibility to healthcare resources, quality and availability of cancer care, tobacco and alcohol consumption, food environments, contaminants in water, soil, and air. Linkage of multiple cancer related data with individual residential history information offers an opportunity to add precision to the analysis of cancer risk and outcomes.
One critical limitation in traditional exposure studies is the assumption that residential location of causative exposure is the location at diagnosis, while in reality, the causative exposure may have occurred at some previous address in the residential history. When past residences are ignored (mostly because they have been largely unavailable), exposures may be missed entirely or misclassified, and results biased against finding the association between exposure and disease.
One of the principal reasons residential history has been largely ignored in epidemiological studies is that these data have been difficult and expensive to obtain. In the past, residential histories were obtained by interview with the subjects or close relatives. The recent increase in awareness of commercially available and other potential automated electronic sources of residential history data presents an opportunity to capitalize on the role of residential history in the context of cancer research and encourage the research community to generate new knowledge about the interactions between place and cancer over time.
Research Objectives
This NOSI encourages studies focusing on two major themes: 1) Methodology for assessment and improvement of residential history data quality, and 2) Residential history data use in research in combination with other linked data sources to address environmental exposures and cancer risk, and additional cancer related information to address different areas across the cancer control continuum.
Studies may include, but are not limited to the following topics:
- Development of automated algorithms that would improve the quality of matching residential information and location (geocoding) and facilitate construction of viable, temporally sequenced residential histories
- Development of novel approaches to assess the impacts of varying amounts of misclassification of residence location (positional error) on the assessment of exposures and cancer risk
- Studies that utilize residential history data in combination with other linked data sources to address the impacts of various exposures on cancer risk and outcomes (e.g. Environmental Protection Agency data and US Geological Survey data)
- Studies that utilize residential history data to assess the impacts of changing residence on various areas across the cancer control continuum (e.g., accessibility to cancer screening, quality of care, treatment options, quality of life after surviving cancer)
- Validation studies focused on comparison and consolidation of vendor supplied residential histories with self-reported addresses of cancer patients to improve completeness of residential history information.
Additional information related to residential history research at NCI, including the software for residential history address consolidation are available at https://gis.cancer.gov/research/residential-histories.html