Opportunities and Challenges in Geospatial Approaches to Breast Cancer Prevention and Control

Abstract

The utility of geospatial approaches to breast cancer control are known to be influential across the cancer control continuum, although they range broadly from residential histories, to wearable sensors, to healthcare service area delineation, and beyond. Advances in computational technologies, location-based data expansion, and cancer control research provide fertile ground for adapting and applying geospatial approaches to reduce the burden of breast and other cancers. However, key challenges exist that are slowing down our progress towards this end: (a) the tension between the democratization of data and computational specialization coupled with theory; (b) the need to move from observation and monitoring to intervening; (c) the need to integrate objective measures from tools such as GPS, accelerometry, and remote sensing with subjective aspects and individual utilities and (d) data privacy and security balanced with accessibility. These challenges may be met, at least in part, through opportunities related to: data collection, storage, sharing, and analytics; workforce/training; and research methods. Cross-disciplinary teams are advancing computational and theoretical approaches to understanding the interplay across these dimensions, but we need multidisciplinary teams to apply them to fully achieve progress in mitigating the burden of cancer and reducing disparities in its impacts. Suggested actions are laid out to guide researchers, policy makers, funders, and cancer centers.