A study to advance cancer prevention by identifying how healthier food environments could reduce cancer incidence and mortality has been approved for data access.
The project is being undertaken by Kaitlin Muzio, as part of a Master’s thesis supervised by Rachel Murphy, Associate Professor at the School of Population and Public Health, within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.
“The findings of this study may identify what aspects of the food environment should be targeted for approaches to increase access to healthy foods, and reduce cancer risk”, says Muzio. “We also expect to identify high priority areas where public health efforts should be focused.”
The project will link data from the Can-FED database with the BC Cancer Registry and the Central Demographics File to determine associations between categories of food outlets and incidence of obesity related cancers in Canada and determine associations between categories of food outlets and obesity related cancer mortality.
Can-FED is a Canadian dataset that provides geographic measures of the food environment at the neighborhood level, such as the density of food outlets. Using geography conversion tools it is possible to link Can-FED measures to individual-level health data. A diversity of food categories represents an inclusive set of different and overarching food outlet types, such as retailers with healthy food options (e.g., supermarkets, grocery stores), convenient food options (e.g., corner stores, fast-food outlets), and independent and specialty retailers (e.g., bakeries, fish markets, coffee shops), amongst other options.
In addition to the Master's thesis, the research results will be communicated through conference presentations and articles.
