Exploring Smoking Habits, Neighborhood Characteristics, and Polygenic Risk: Data Analysis Using The Health and Retirement Study

Smoking is among the leading causes of death, necessitating the identification of individual and environmental risk factors. The study tested the hypotheses that both genetic risk and perceiving one’s neighborhood as undesirable (i.e., that the neighborhood was less cohesive and more disordered) would increase smoking risk. An additional hypothesis was that these individual and neighborhood-level risk factors may synergistically increase smoking risk. Data from the Health Retirement Study, a racially/ethnically diverse sample of older U.S. adults, was utilized for this study. All but one hypothesis was supported within this study. Non-Hispanic White participants who perceived their neighborhoods as more cohesive were significantly less likely to smoke. Incidentally, the same association was not significant among non-Hispanic Black participants. These findings suggest that non-Hispanic White individuals benefit more from perceived neighborhood cohesion than do non-Hispanic Black individuals and interventions aimed at increasing cohesion may be an effective strategy for preventing smoking in different neighborhood areas. Specifically, programs that include bonding and bridging interventions can be implemented to increase cohesion in diverse communities so that all benefit from mutual trust.