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TOPLINE:

Out of 97,132 children with cancer, 12.63% at the time diagnosis lived in neighborhoods that had high rates of poverty for the previous 30 years. These children faced a 26% and 15% higher risk for early death from cancer and overall cancer death, respectively, than those living in areas without prolonged poverty.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a population-based study using nationwide cancer data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-22 database, along with neighborhood information from a census database, excluding Illinois and Massachusetts.
• The analysis included 97,132 children who were diagnosed with cancer between 2006 and 2020.
• Researchers examined whether persistent poverty — defined as a neighborhood population of 20% or more making an income below the poverty line for at least 30 years — was related to a higher risk for early death from cancer, defined as death from cancer within 3 months of diagnosis, and overall cancer-specific mortality.
• Investigators excluded individuals with missing data on age, race/ethnicity, sex, cancer type, cause of death, survival months, and rurality and those with zero survival months.

TAKEAWAY:

• Among the children surveyed, 12.63% lived in neighborhoods with long-term poverty at the time of their diagnosis and were slightly younger than children in neighborhoods without prolonged poverty (mean age, 9.32 vs 9.75 years).
• The most common cancer types were leukemias (27.04%), central nervous system tumors (16.56%), and lymphomas (15.68%).
• Living in a neighborhood with prolonged poverty was associated with a higher risk for early cancer mortality (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.26; 95% CI, 1.10-1.45) and overall cancer mortality (aHR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.10-1.21).
• A higher percentage of Black and Hispanic children were diagnosed with cancer in neighborhoods with prolonged poverty (18.09% and 59.47%, respectively) than those of the same race living in neighborhoods without prolonged poverty (9.19% and 30.25%, respectively).

IN PRACTICE:

“Understanding the impact of persistent-poverty neighborhoods on pediatric cancer outcomes can help physicians better address the needs of their patients and identify opportunities for evidence-based interventions,” the study authors wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Emma Hymel, MPH, from the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. It was published online in Pediatrics.

LIMITATIONS:

Information on factors that affect survival, such as health insurance and income, was not available. The study relied on patients’ addresses at diagnosis. Geographic identifiers, such as state, registry, and county, were not provided to protect patient privacy, which may have limited the analysis of how survival rates differ by location.

DISCLOSURES:

The authors reported no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.