We have identified five key recommendations to address lung cancer survival disparities between Māori and non-Māori.
Addressing lung cancer survival disparities
- Intervene in ways that will work for Māori to shift the distribution of lung cancer stage back toward earlier stage disease
- Improve Māori access to surgical pathways, by shifting stage of disease, preventing and managing comorbidity, and constant improvement to how well our surgical pathways work for Māori
- Recognise and address the disproportionate burden of travel faced by Māori with lung cancer, principally due to the systematic centralisation of services for this cancer.
- Make our broader lung cancer services as available, affordable and acceptable for Māori as possible, through interventions including a comprehensive and well-resourced Māori cancer navigator service
- Improve the completeness and quality of our centralised health data in the context of lung cancer, with prioritisation of complete clinical stage data and reporting of all treatment, regardless of whether it was publicly or privately funded
Visit our lung cancer research publications in OUR Archive
"Iterative changes to our health system across these five areas must be prioritised within health policy and budgeting at a central government level if we are to expect any improvements in lung cancer survival outcomes for Māori – let alone the achievement of equity of survival outcomes for Māori by 2030."
Professor Jason Gurney
Our research approach
Despite the lethality of lung cancer, along with its burden as by far the most common cause of cancer death for Māori, there has been a lack of research on the determinants of the enduring lung cancer survival disparity between Māori and non-Māori. There were several important questions which remained under-considered at a national level, which if answered could lead to changes in lung cancer service provision for Māori patients.
In 2021, the C3 Research Group received a Project Grant from the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) to address these gaps. The overarching aim of this project was to draw together new and existing information to inform improvements in lung cancer services for Māori in New Zealand, with a view to achieving equity in lung cancer survival for Māori by 2030.
Research objectives:
- To understand the extent to which there are differences between Māori and non-Māori lung cancer patients in access to best-practice treatment
- To understand the extent to which identified differences between Māori and non-Māori are modifiable, and how these differences might be modified