Abstract
Historical redlining is a 1930s residential segregation policy that graded neighborhoods according to race, class, and land-use and has been linked to worse breast cancer outcomes today. Since redlining grades were determined by socioeconomic and environmental attributes, evaluating neighborhood change presents a unique opportunity to study the relative contributions of socioeconomic and physical environment to breast cancer. We evaluated whether longitudinal neighborhood change, specifically gentrification and disinvestment, is associated with survival among breast cancer cases today. We used historical redlining grade and labor class census data from 1940 to 2010 to create neighborhood change typologies: stable high neighborhood socioeconomic status (NSES), disinvested, gentrified, and stable low NSES; additional criteria were used for a second, stricter definition of stable types (“truly stable”). Typologies were linked to 43,023 breast cancer cases diagnosed 2008–2018 from New York State. Cox models estimated hazard ratios (HR) associated with neighborhood change types, using both stable high NSES and stable low NSES as referents in separate models. We found significant survival differences according to neighborhood change type. All neighborhood change typologies had higher mortality risks compared to stable high NSES, regardless of how stable NSES was defined. This was consistent in models using stable low NSES as the referent when stable NSES was defined broadly, where only stable high NSES was associated with higher survival (HR = 0.73, 95% CI 0.67–0.80) and gentrification and disinvestment did not show differential mortality risks. However, when stable NSES is defined conservatively (truly stable NSES), we found evidence of survival benefits for disinvestment (HR = 0.76, 95% CI 0.65, 0.89) and gentrification (HR = 0.76, 95% CI 0.67, 0.87) compared to truly stable low NSES neighborhoods, and the survival benefit for truly stable high NSES was strengthened (HR = 0.43, 95% CI 0.35, 0.52), though sample size is reduced in the truly stable NSES models. Our results suggest survival is always highest among consistently high NSES neighborhoods but that gentrification and disinvestment may offer buffers compared to redlined neighborhoods with consistently low NSES. This study demonstrates the complexity of neighborhood change and suggests contemporary socioeconomic conditions and underlying physical environment may both be significant domains for breast cancer outcomes.



Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Historical redlining score data are publicly available for download at: https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/141121/version/V2/view. Census data are publicly available at data.cenus.gov. Breast cancer data were sourced from the NYSCR. These data cannot be shared because of privacy. Access to NYSCR data requires approval from the NYSCR. The NYSCR can be contacted at: [email protected].
References
Coughlin SS. Social determinants of breast cancer risk, stage, and survival. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2019;177(3):537–48. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-019-05340-7.
Tehranifar P, Goyal A, Phelan JC, et al. Age at cancer diagnosis, amenability to medical interventions, and racial/ethnic disparities in cancer mortality. Cancer Causes Control. 2016;27(4):553–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-016-0729-2.
Williams DR, Mohammed SA, Shields AE. Understanding and effectively addressing breast cancer in African American women: unpacking the social context. Cancer. 2016;122(14):2138–49. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.29935.
Daly B, Olopade OI. A perfect storm: how tumor biology, genomics, and health care delivery patterns collide to create a racial survival disparity in breast cancer and proposed interventions for change. CA Cancer J Clin. 2015;65(3):221–38. https://doi.org/10.3322/caac.21271.
Jatoi I, Anderson WF, Rao SR, Devesa SS. Breast cancer trends among black and white women in the United States. J Clin Oncol. 2005;23(31):7836–41.
Bikomeye JC, Zhou Y, McGinley EL, et al. Historical redlining and breast cancer treatment and survival among older women in the US. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djad034.
Miller-Kleinhenz JM, Barber LE, Maliniak ML, et al. Historical redlining, persistent mortgage discrimination, and race in breast cancer outcomes. JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(2): e2356879. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.56879.
Plascak JJ, Beyer K, Xu X, Stroup AM, Jacob G, Llanos AAM. Association between residence in historically redlined districts indicative of structural racism and racial and ethnic disparities in breast cancer outcomes. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(7): e2220908–e2220908. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.20908.
Krieger N, Wright E, Chen JT, Waterman PD, Huntley ER, Arcaya M. Cancer stage at diagnosis, historical redlining, and current neighborhood characteristics: breast, cervical, lung, and colorectal cancers, Massachusetts, 2001–2015. Am J Epidemiol. 2020;189(10):1065–75. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwaa045.
Wright E, Waterman PD, Testa C, Chen JT, Krieger N. Breast cancer incidence, hormone receptor status, historical redlining, and current neighborhood characteristics in Massachusetts, 2005-2015. JNCI Cancer Spectr. 2005. https://doi.org/10.1093/jncics/pkac016.
Loehrer AP, Weiss JE, Chatoorgoon KK, et al. Residential redlining, neighborhood trajectory, and equity of breast and colorectal cancer care. Ann Surg. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1097/SLA.0000000000006156.
Lima SM, Palermo TM, Lee FF, et al. Historical redlining and all-cause survival after breast cancer diagnosis. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1158/1055-9965.Epi-24-1862.
Rothstein R. The color of law: a forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing; 2017.
Nelson RK, Winling L, Marciano, Connolly N, et al. Mapping inequality. Available from: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/. Accessed 25 Mar 2025.
Madrigano J, Calvo Hernandez C, Stephenson S, et al. Environmental racism: the relationship between historical residential redlining and current environmental hazards. ISEE Conference; 2021.
Swope CB, Hernández D, Cushing LJ. The relationship of historical redlining with present-day neighborhood environmental and health outcomes: a scoping review and conceptual model. J Urban Health. 2022;99(6):959–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-022-00665-z.
McCullough LE. The long red line: breast cancer incidence at the intersection of unjust structural policies and their contemporary manifestations. JNCI Cancer Spectr. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/jncics/pkac018.
Terry MB, Colditz GA. Epidemiology and risk factors for breast cancer: 21st century advances, gaps to address through interdisciplinary science. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a041317.
Breast Cancer Risk and Prevention. American Cancer Society. Available at: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/breast-cancer/risk-and-prevention.html. Accessed 6 Oct 2026.
Lima SM, Palermo TM, Aldstadt J, et al. Historical redlining and clustering of present-day breast cancer factors. Cancer Causes Control. 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-024-01950-9.
Miller-Kleinhenz JM, Moubadder L, Beyer KM, et al. Redlining-associated methylation in breast tumors: the impact of contemporary structural racism on the tumor epigenome. Front Oncol. 2023;13: 1154554. https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2023.1154554.
Cole HVS, Mehdipanah R, Gullón P, Triguero-Mas M. Breaking down and building up: gentrification, its drivers, and urban health inequality. Curr Environ Health Rep. 2021;8(2):157–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-021-00309-5.
Glass R. London: aspects of change. London: MacGibbon & Kee; 1964.
Bhavsar NA, Kumar M, Richman L. Defining gentrification for epidemiologic research: a systematic review. PLoS ONE. 2020;15(5): e0233361. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233361.
Zhang D, Matthews CE, Powell-Wiley TM, Xiao Q. Ten-year change in neighborhood socioeconomic status and colorectal cancer. Cancer. 2019;125(4):610–7. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.31832.
Chrisinger BW, Springfield S, Whitsel EA, et al. The association of neighborhood changes with health-related quality of life in the women’s health initiative. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022;19(9):5309.
Lynch EE, Malcoe LH, Laurent SE, Richardson J, Mitchell BC, Meier HCS. The legacy of structural racism: associations between historic redlining, current mortgage lending, and health. SSM Popul Health. 2021;14: 100793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100793.
Meier HCS, Mitchell BC. Historic redlining scores for 2010 and 2020 US Census Tracts [cited 2025 Mar 25]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor] 2021;10-15. Available from: https://doi.org/10.3886/E141121V2.
Meier HC, Mitchell BC. Tracing the legacy of redlining: a new method for tracking the origins of housing segregation. National Community Reinvestment Coalition. 2022. https://ncrc.org/redlining-score. Accessed 6 Oct 2026.
US Tract 1910–2019. Social Explorer Geodata. Available at: https://geodata.socialexplorer.com/collection/90937129-3414-434e-a880-e358308654b4. Accessed 6 Oct 2026.
Krieger N, Kim R, Feldman J, Waterman PD. Using the index of concentration at the extremes at multiple geographical levels to monitor health inequities in an era of growing spatial social polarization: massachusetts, USA (2010-14). Int J Epidemiol. 2018;47(3):788–819. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyy004.
NAACCR Data Dictionary Version 25. Survival months presumed alive. Available from: https://apps.naaccr.org/data-dictionary/data-dictionary/version=25/data-item-view/item-number=1787/. Accessed 25 Mar 2025.
Williams DT. A call to focus on racial domination and oppression: a response to “Racial and ethnic inequality in poverty and affluence, 1959–2015″. Popul Res Policy Rev. 2019;38(5):655–63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09538-x.
Go J. For a postcolonial sociology. Theory Soc. 2013;42(1):25–55.
Marlow T, Frickel S, Elliott JR. Do legacy industrial sites produce legacy effects in ethnic and racial residential settlement? Environmental inequality formation in Rhode Island’s industrial core. Sociol Forum. 2020;35(4):1093–113. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12639.
Cushing LJ, Li S, Steiger BB, Casey JA. Historical red-lining is associated with fossil fuel power plant siting and present-day inequalities in air pollutant emissions. Nat Energy. 2023;8(1):52–61. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01162-y.
Frickel S, Tollefson J. When environmental inequality racialized: historical evidence from Providence. Rhode Island Socius. 2022;8:23780231221127540. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231221127541.
Lane HM, Morello-Frosch R, Marshall JD, Apte JS. Historical redlining is associated with present-day air pollution disparities in U.S. cities. Environ Sci Technol Lett. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.1c01012.
Tollefson J. Environment, racialization, and territorial stigma: evidence from HOLC texts. Social Science History Association 2026 Annual Meeting.
Motairek I, Chen Z, Makhlouf MHE, Rajagopalan S, Al-Kindi S. Historical neighborhood redlining and contemporary environmental racism. Local Environ. 2023;28(4):518–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2022.2155942.
Delmelle EC. Five decades of neighborhood classifications and their transitions: a comparison of four US cities, 1970–2010. Appl Geogr. 2015;57:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2014.12.002.
Delmelle EC. Mapping the DNA of urban neighborhoods: clustering longitudinal sequences of neighborhood socioeconomic change. Ann Am Assoc Geogr. 2016;106(1):36–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2015.1096188.
Carlos H, Weiss JE, Carter B, Akré EL, Diaz A, Loehrer AP. Development of neighborhood trajectories employing historic redlining and the area deprivation index. Res Sq. 2023. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3783331/v1.
Graetz N, Esposito M. Historical redlining and contemporary racial disparities in neighborhood life expectancy. Soc Forces. 2022;102(1):1–22. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soac114.
Tulier ME, Reid C, Mujahid MS, Allen AM. “Clear action requires clear thinking”: a systematic review of gentrification and health research in the United States. Health Place. 2019;59: 102173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.102173.
Cole HVS, Triguero-Mas M, Connolly JJT, Anguelovski I. Determining the health benefits of green space: does gentrification matter? Health Place. 2019;57:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.02.001.
Hillier AE. Redlining and the home owners’ loan corporation. J Urban Hist. 2003;29(4):394–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144203029004002.
Cornelissen S, Jang-Trettien C. Housing in the context of neighborhood decline. In: McCabe BJ, Rosen E, editors. The sociology of housing. University of Chicago Press; 2023.
Plascak JJ, Rundle AG, Xu X, et al. Associations between neighborhood disinvestment and breast cancer outcomes within a populous state registry. Cancer. 2022;128(1):131–8. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.33900.
Mitchell B, Edlebi J, Meier H, Richardson J, Dean J, Chen L. Displaced by design: fifty years of gentrification and Black cultural displacement in US cities. National Community Reinvestment Coalition 2025.
Berry DA, Cronin KA, Plevritis SK, et al. Effect of screening and adjuvant therapy on mortality from breast cancer. N Engl J Med. 2005;353(17):1784–92. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa050518.
Link BG, Northridge ME, Phelan JC, Ganz ML. Social epidemiology and the fundamental cause concept: on the structuring of effective cancer screens by socioeconomic status. Milbank Q. 1998;76(3):375–402. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.00096.
Huang T, Ekenga CC. Associations between social capital and screening mammography among older U.S. women. Prev Med Rep. 2025;52: 103026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2025.103026.
Mui Y, Gittelsohn J, Jones-Smith JC. Longitudinal associations between change in neighborhood social disorder and change in food swamps in an urban setting. J Urban Health. 2017;94(1):75–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-016-0107-0.
Bonaccio M, Di Castelnuovo A, Costanzo S, et al. Ultra-processed food and mortality among long-term cancer survivors from the moli-sani study: prospective findings and analysis of biological pathways. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2026;35(4):664–74. https://doi.org/10.1158/1055-9965.Epi-25-0808.
Turner MC, Andersen ZJ, Baccarelli A, et al. Outdoor air pollution and cancer: an overview of the current evidence and public health recommendations. CA Cancer J Clin. 2020;70(6):460–79. https://doi.org/10.3322/caac.21632.
Beck D, Nilsson EE, Ben Maamar M, Skinner MK. Environmental induced transgenerational inheritance impacts systems epigenetics in disease etiology. Sci Rep. 2022;12(1): 5452. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09336-0.
Harney E, Paterson S, Collin H, Chan BHK, Bennett D, Plaistow SJ. Pollution induces epigenetic effects that are stably transmitted across multiple generations. Evol Lett. 2022;6(2):118–35. https://doi.org/10.1002/evl3.273.
Diez Roux AV. Investigating neighborhood and area effects on health. Am J Public Health. 2001;91(11):1783–9. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.91.11.1783.
Swope C, Markley S, Whittaker S, Hillier A. How and why does redlining matter for present-day health? Critical perspectives on causality, cartography, and capitalism. Am J Public Health. 2025;115(5):769–79. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2024.308000.
Noone AM, Lund JL, Mariotto A, et al. Comparison of SEER treatment data with medicare claims. Med Care. 2016;54(9):e55-64. https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0000000000000073.
Sherman RL, Williamson L, Andrews P, Kahn A. Primary payer at DX: issues with collection and assessment of data quality. J Registry Manag. 2016;43(2):99–100.
Acknowledgements
We thank and acknowledge the NYSCR for access to data. NYSCR data used in this study was supported in part by cooperative agreement 6NU58DP006309 awarded to the New York State Department of Health by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and by Contract 75N91018D00005 (Task Order 75N91018F00001) from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the New York State Department of Health and do not necessarily represent the official views of the CDC or the NCI. SM Lima is supported by a Postdoctoral Training Fellowship (T32 CA261787).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Sarah M. Lima: conceptualization, design, formal analysis, methodology, visualization, writing—original draft, and writing—review and editing. Tia M. Palermo: conceptualization, design, methodology, supervision, and writing—review and editing. Furrina F. Lee: data curation, methodology, and writing—review and editing. Tabassum Z. Insaf: data curation, methodology, and writing—review and editing. Jared Aldstadt: methodology and writing—review and editing. Lili Tian: methodology and writing—review and editing. Helen C. S. Meier: data curation, methodology, and writing—review and editing. Henry Louis Taylor Jr.: conceptualization and writing—review and editing. Deborah O. Erwin: writing—review and editing. Heather M. Ochs-Balcom: conceptualization, design, methodology, supervision, and writing—review and editing.
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
ESM 1 (download DOCX )
(DOCX 543 KB)
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Lima, S.M., Palermo, T.M., Lee, F.F. et al. After the Maps: Assessing Longitudinal Neighborhood Change After Historical Redlining with Present-Day Breast Cancer Survival. J Urban Health (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-026-01166-z
Published:
Version of record:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-026-01166-z


