Site Editor
Soo Park, MD
Soo Park, MD
Posted: Thursday, December 19, 2024
Regional rates of melanoma may be linked to local access to tanning bed facilities, according to the results of a New England study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. Guixing Wei, PhD, of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and colleagues found a negative association between average travel time to tanning facilities and county-level melanoma rates. They also identified high-risk clusters across the geographic area of their spatial ecologic study, suggesting that targeting interventions to high-risk areas may reduce geographic disparities in melanoma rates.
“Our research offers compelling geographic evidence linking access to tanning beds to this deadly disease,” the investigators said. “The negative association between travel time to tanning facilities and county-level melanoma incidence rate suggests that decreasing access to indoor tanning facilities may help reduce the regional melanoma incidence rate.”
To conduct the study, the researchers obtained county-level melanoma incidence rates in New England between 2014 and 2018, the locations of tanning bed facilities, demographic data, socioeconomic data, and geographic data from the National Cancer Institute State Cancer Profiles, Data Axle, American Community Survey, and the U.S. Geological Survey. They used spatial regression models to determine the association between melanoma incidence and access to tanning beds, adjusting for confounding factors.
The investigators reported that for every 1-minute increase in average travel time to tanning facilities (within a 30-minute threshold), the melanoma incidence rate decreased by 3.46% in the same county and 1.92% across New England. They also identified six high-risk clusters, seven low-risk clusters, and one outlier of melanoma incidence.
“Every day, we encounter patients diagnosed with melanoma. Witnessing the devastating impact of this disease drives us to find ways to prevent it,” the researchers added. “[We] hope this [research] could inform more effective public health strategies to combat skin cancer.”
Disclosure: The study authors reported no conflicts of interest.
Journal of Investigative Dermatology
JNCCN Spotlights
