Dr. William W. Aitken (Medicine) co-authored an article titled "Precision greenness exposure is associated with lung cancer risk in medicare beneficiaries" published in the August 2026 volume of Cancer Causes & Control. This study examined whether lung cancer risk is influenced by block-level greenness, controlling for age, sex, race/ethnicity, area deprivation index (ADI), and walkability in older adults, and whether age, sex, race/ethnicity, ADI, or walkability plays a moderating role in this relationship.
Results indicated that higher neighborhood greenness in 2011 was associated with lower lung cancer risk from 2012 to 2016 after adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, ADI, and walkability, with each 0.1-unit increase in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) corresponding to an approximately 9% lower lung cancer risk (OR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.85–0.98, p = .008). In the best-fit model, walkability moderated the associations between greenness and lung cancer risk, with the beneficiaries living in non-car dependent neighborhoods experiencing a lower risk.
