Pasifika women still face breast cancer inequities - researcher

7:46 am today

The Breast Cancer Foundation wants women with symptoms to be referred directly for diagnostic imaging.

Photo: BSIP via AFP

A New Zealand oncologist and researcher says the country's health system needs to be easily accessible and culturally safe to help narrow inequities in breast cancer care.

Dr Olivia Perelini is leading a study looking at timely detection and treatment and closing the breast cancer gap for Pasifika women in Aotearoa.

She told Pacific Waves many Pacific women are affected by breast cancer, and despite advances being made, the gap is not closing as fast as they would like.

"Pacific women are more likely to develop breast cancer at a younger age, and they're also more likely to develop advanced breast cancer, more aggressive breast cancer. We also know that Pacific women are 52 per cent more likely to die from breast cancer compared with non-Māori and non-Pacific women," she said.

"That's a huge burden for our Pacific women and their families.

"Recently there's been changes, and we've got the faster cancer treatment guidelines in place, we've got Breast Screen Aotearoa program, Te Aho o Te Kahu reforms, but we're still seeing these stats.

"Another one is that Pacific are 42 per cent more likely to experience surgical delays, and so that tells us that we're not quite meeting the need in this area, and so we need to be doing better for our community."

She defined "doing better" as building trust, and making sure the healthcare offering was suitable.

"We need to have a health system and a model that's trusted by the community, and is easily accessible, and that's culturally safe. We we also need to be picking up breast cancer earlier, so that it's treatable and it's curable, rather than later down the track when people are coming in with advanced disease."

Dr Perelini said the exciting thing about this study is that it's a Pacific-led team analysing the data.

Olivia Perelini

Photo: Supplied

"And really put a Pacific lens on that and see what are these critical points of delay, barriers to care, systematic inequities that are affecting our Pacific women.

"After analyzing the data sets, what we want to do in phase two is really capture the experiences of Pacific women, whānau, and the frontline clinicians or providers across the screening, diagnosis, treatment, and also survivorship through talanoa, and then from that explore solutions.

"And so ... a co-design, right, and mixed methods approach, so actually getting culturally grounded interventions that are coming from our own community, because I think that's where we're going to find the solutions.

"And then hopefully following that is actually to implement these - possible in a prototype intervention to actually pilot and see whether we can reframe or change some of the system, so that it is more accessible, and it is a better fit for Pacific women."