Rangahau
What the research shows
57 papers published by members of Hei Āhuru Mōwai, read and grouped into themes. This page sets out what each summary was built from, and what the collection does not reach.
How to read this page
Who wrote the summaries
Every summary here was written for this website by Redux, the team building it, from the paper itself. They are not the authors’ abstracts and they are not the authors’ words. Each paper is linked, so any summary can be checked against it.
Hei Āhuru Mōwai has not yet reviewed this page or the summaries on it.
What was actually read
37 of these summaries were written from the whole paper. 3 were written from part of one, where only some sections could be reached. 17 – 30% of the collection – were written from the abstract alone.
Where the assessment records a reason it differs from paper to paper: a paywall or a sign-in wall, a publisher page that refused an automated request, a file that could not be fetched. Some record no reason at all. Each paper below carries a badge saying how much of it was read, and the route taken to it is printed with the summary in the assessment’s own words.
A summary built from an abstract, or from part of a paper, deserves less weight than one built from the whole of it. Nothing on this page pretends otherwise.
Not all of it has results
4 of these are registered protocols: the design of a study, published before it has findings. A further 13 are viewpoints, commentaries, editorials, position letters or narrative reviews, which argue a case or draw together other people’s work rather than report a new dataset. Both kinds are worth reading and neither is evidence of an outcome.
The method line on each entry says which kind of document it is.
How the collection was gathered
These are papers Hei Āhuru Mōwai holds, gathered because its members wrote them. No systematic search was run, and no inclusion criteria were applied beyond that.
A subject missing from this page says nothing about the literature. It says this collection does not hold a paper on it.
6 of these papers are not cancer studies
This is the organisation’s own list of what its members have published, so what is on it is settled by who wrote a paper rather than by what the paper is about. These 6 are named here rather than dropped, each with the assessment’s own words on where it sits.
4 are about the system cancer care runs through
Each is about the system cancer care runs through rather than about a cancer. The assessment records each as not cancer-specific rather than as unrelated, and says what it bears on. 3 of them also sit under a theme below.
- What we do matters: Supporting anti-racism and decolonisation of public health teaching and practice through the development of Māori public health competenciesFrom the assessment: It is a workforce-training resource rather than a cancer-outcomes study, of most use to Hei Āhuru Mōwai if it is assessing or building training for people working with Māori across the cancer system, not only clinicians.
- Mortality outcomes and inequities experienced by rural Māori in Aotearoa New ZealandFrom the assessment: This paper is not cancer-specific - it covers all-cause and amenable mortality generally (amenable mortality means deaths that good healthcare could plausibly have prevented, a category that includes but is not limited to some cancers).
- Disparities in post-operative mortality between Māori and non-Indigenous ethnic groups in New ZealandFrom the assessment: This covers surgery generally, not cancer surgery specifically.
- Postoperative mortality in New Zealand following general anaesthetic: demographic patterns and temporal trendsFrom the assessment: This is not a cancer-specific paper, but cancer surgery happens under general anaesthetic, so a gap of this size in the wider surgical system is relevant background for anyone looking at Māori cancer treatment outcomes.
2 the assessment says are not about cancer
Each of these is here because a member of the organisation wrote it. What the assessment says about each, it says in the words below, on that paper’s own terms.
- Tū Kaha: He mōhio ki ngā Māori o te kōmaoa waewae (Stand Strong: A qualitative study of Māori with venous leg ulcers in Aotearoa New Zealand)From the assessment: This paper is not about cancer – it concerns venous leg ulcers, a vascular skin condition.
- Te Pepe Ao Uri Whāriki. The development of pūrākau analysis frameworkFrom the assessment: This paper is not about cancer.
The shape of the collection
| Subject | Papers |
|---|---|
| National figures on incidence, stage and survival | 7 |
| Lung cancer | 8 |
| Screening participation and design | 9 |
| Access to surgery and treatment | 10 |
| Time to diagnosis, and the route people take to it | 5 |
| Palliative and end-of-life care | 3 |
| Cancer policy and system design | 9 |
| Data, research governance and workforce | 8 |
| Prevention and co-occurring conditions | 5 |
| Services through COVID-19 | 3 |
| Subject | Papers |
|---|---|
| System and policy | 27 |
| Treatment | 21 |
| Screening | 16 |
| Diagnosis | 13 |
| Data | 12 |
| Prevention | 6 |
| Workforce | 4 |
| Palliative care | 3 |
| Living after treatment | 1 |
The dated papers run from 2016 to 2024. 9 carry no publication year in the assessment, so no date is shown for them rather than a guessed one.
The themes
10 groupings, made for this website so the collection can be read. They are a finding aid, and are not Hei Āhuru Mōwai’s statement of its research priorities.
7 papers in this theme
Show every themeNational figures on incidence, stage and survival
Registry and linked-data studies that count what is happening across the whole country – who is diagnosed, at what stage, and who survives – reported separately for Māori and non-Māori.
7 papers, 3 of them summarised from less than the whole paper.
Blood cancer incidence, mortality and survival for Māori in New Zealand (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paperCancer Epidemiology· 2024· doi:10.1016/j.canep.2024.102656
Clough S, Wheeler M, Stanley J, Signal V, Ruka M, Koea J, Gurney J
retrospective national registry cohort, 2,653 Māori and 20,458 European blood cancer registrations, NZ Cancer Registry 2007–2019, linked to mortality data to 2018
Our summary of what it found
Using national Cancer Registry data from 2007 to 2019 (2,653 Māori and 20,458 European blood cancer registrations), the study found Māori were more likely than Europeans to be diagnosed with, and to die from, leukaemia and myeloma, and had similar rates of Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Māori had poorer cancer-specific survival across nearly all blood cancer types – age-sex-adjusted hazard ratios were 1.77 for leukaemia, 1.71 for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, 1.40 for myeloma and 1.18 for Hodgkin lymphoma, the last with a wide confidence interval reflecting the small number of cases. Within leukaemia, the survival gap was narrowest under 25 and widest in the 25–64 age bands. The authors call for further research to pinpoint where in the pathway the survival gap arises.
Why it matters: It gives registry-level numbers, not an estimate, for a group of cancers that gets less attention in Māori cancer commentary than the larger solid-tumour cancers.
Limits: A registry and mortality-linkage study can show the size of a gap but not explain it. The authors themselves flag the Hodgkin lymphoma estimate as imprecise because of low case numbers. Read from the full published version-of-record PDF (CC BY licence, Otago OUR Archive).
Read as: full text
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
Does diabetes affect breast cancer survival? (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paperCancer Reports· 2024· doi:10.1002/cnr2.2040
Lawrenson R, Lao C, Stanley J, Teng A, Kuper-Hommel M, Campbell I, Krebs J, Sika-Paotonu D, Koea J, Meredith I, Gurney J
retrospective population-based cohort, 26,968 women with invasive breast cancer, 2005-2020, from Te Rēhita Mate Ūtaetae (the Breast Cancer Foundation National Register) linked to the Virtual Diabetes Register, hospital and mortality data
Our summary of what it found
3,137 of the 26,968 women (11.6%) had diabetes at diagnosis. Unadjusted survival was lower with diabetes present (5-year cancer-specific survival 87% versus 89%; 10-year 79% versus 84%), but once the analysis adjusted for age, tumour characteristics and treatment, diabetes was not associated with worse breast-cancer-specific survival (adjusted hazard ratio 0.99, 95% CI 0.89-1.11). Adjusted hazard ratios for Māori and Pacific women with diabetes were 1.01 and 0.88; for Asian women with diabetes, 0.67.
Why it matters: The raw survival gap by diabetes status looks meaningful but mostly reflects other factors already captured in stage and treatment, which matters for how this comparison gets used in any resource discussing comorbidity and outcomes.
Limits: The authors note the register does not distinguish diabetes type or give a diagnosis date, and had no data on BMI, smoking, alcohol or diet, so residual confounding is possible. Competing mortality risk in the diabetes group is also flagged. I read the full text via PMC.
Read as: full text (PMC10953831, open access)
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
The growing cancer burden: Age-period-cohort projections in Aotearoa New Zealand 2020-2044 (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the abstractCancer Epidemiology· 2024· doi:10.1016/j.canep.2024.102535
Teng A, Stanley J, Jackson C, Koea J, Lao C, Lawrenson R, Meredith I, Sika-Paotonu D, Gurney J
age-period-cohort modelling applied to 25 years of national cancer registry data, with population projections and sub-group breakdowns by age, sex and ethnicity
Our summary of what it found
Annual cancer diagnoses are projected to rise from 25,700 a year in 2015-2019 to 45,100 a year by 2040-44, a 76% increase (2.3% a year). Age-standardised incidence rises more modestly, by 9% overall (348 to 378 cases per 100,000 person-years), with a larger increase projected for men (11%) than women (6%). The authors note that trends for individual cancer types vary and some move in the opposite direction to projections published for other countries.
Why it matters: Most of the projected increase in case numbers comes from population growth and ageing rather than rising risk, which is a distinction worth keeping in any sentence about a 'growing burden' so the figure is not read as a worsening risk per person.
Limits: I could not get past ScienceDirect's access wall (403 on direct fetch) and found no PMC or other open-access copy; Europe PMC's own record confirms it is not open access. This assessment is built from the abstract only, sourced from Europe PMC's indexed record, not the full paper. I have not seen the paper's stated limitations, ethnicity-specific figures, or per-cancer-type breakdowns.
Read as: abstract only (Europe PMC indexed record); publisher page returned 403 Forbidden, no open-access full text found
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
Equity of Cancer and Diabetes Co-Occurrence: A National Study With 44 Million Person-Years of Follow-Up (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paperJCO Global Oncology· 2023· doi:10.1200/GO.22.00357
Jason Gurney, James Stanley, Andrea Teng, Bridget Robson, Nina Scott, Dianne Sika-Paotonu, Chunhuan Lao, Ross Lawrenson, Jeremy Krebs, Jonathan Koea
retrospective national cohort using linked administrative data, close to 5 million people, 44 million person-years, 2008-2018
Our summary of what it found
Linking national health records for close to five million people over 44 million person-years, the study found people with diabetes had higher cancer rates than people without it, in every ethnic group, with Māori carrying both the highest age-standardised rate (1,303.6 per 100,000 person-years) and the highest rate ratio (1.37, against 1.23-1.35 for the other groups measured). Uterine, pancreatic, kidney and liver cancers showed the strongest links to diabetes across all groups. It is a descriptive study: it establishes the size of the co-occurring burden by ethnicity, not why the gap exists.
Why it matters: It gives a population-level size and shape to the diabetes-cancer overlap Māori carry disproportionately, which matters for anyone planning screening or comorbidity care.
Limits: Descriptive/observational - no causal claim is made or should be drawn. There is a related but distinct 2022 PLOS ONE paper by an overlapping author group with a very similar title ("Cancer and diabetes co-occurrence: A national study with 44 million person-years of follow-up", DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0276913) - worth not conflating the two. I read the full text via the PMC open-access copy.
Read as: full text (PMC open-access copy)
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
The most commonly diagnosed and most common causes of cancer death for Māori New Zealanders (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paperNew Zealand Medical Journal, vol 133, no 1521, pages 77-96 (4 September 2020)· 2020
Jason K Gurney, Bridget Robson, Jonathan Koea, Nina Scott, James Stanley, Diana Sarfati
descriptive epidemiology, national cancer registry and mortality data for Māori, 2007-2016
Our summary of what it found
Ranks the most commonly diagnosed cancers and the most common causes of cancer death for Māori using registry and mortality data from 2007-2016. Lung cancer was both the most diagnosed (around 401 registrations a year, 42 per 100,000) and the leading cause of death (around 311 deaths a year, 32 per 100,000), ahead of breast, prostate and colorectal for diagnoses, and breast and colorectal for deaths. Māori incidence exceeded non-Māori for most of these cancers, most markedly for lung, and the paper documents a broader survival gap across cancer types.
Why it matters: Gives a ranked, Māori-specific picture of where the cancer burden actually falls, useful for prioritising advocacy and services rather than working from unranked or non-Māori-specific figures.
Limits: Full text read directly on the NZMJ site (confirmed open access, PDF available). Data run to 2016 - now roughly a decade old - so more recent registry updates may have shifted the exact figures even if the ranking holds.
Read as: full text (nzmj.org.nz, open access)
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
Disparities in cancer specific survival between Māori and non-Māori New Zealanders, 2007-2016 (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the abstract
national cohort/data-linkage study
Our summary of what it found
Māori had worse cancer-specific survival than non-Māori for 23 of the 24 most common causes of Māori cancer death, with the gap ranging from 12% to 156% depending on the cancer. The size of the gap varied with deprivation, comorbidity and cancer type, and tended to be largest among patients with no other health conditions.
Why it matters: The gap shows up across nearly every common cancer, which the authors use to argue that no single, generic fix will close it and each cancer needs its own response.
Limits: The publisher page did not load past its navigation shell, so this summary rests on the PubMed abstract record rather than a direct read of the ASCO page.
Read as: abstract (via PubMed/search-indexed abstract text; the ASCO landing page itself returned only navigation content, so this was cross-checked against the PubMed record, ID 32511067)
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
Stage at diagnosis for Māori cancer patients, disparities, similarities and data limitations (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the abstract
retrospective registry analysis cross-checked against clinical audit data, 196,967 patients, 2007–2016
Our summary of what it found
An analysis of New Zealand Cancer Registry records for 196,967 patients diagnosed between 2007 and 2016, checked against separate clinical audit data for breast, colon, rectal, lung and stomach cancer. Māori patients were less likely to be diagnosed with localised disease for several cancers, most markedly prostate (odds ratio 0.50) and lung (odds ratio 0.53), though this did not hold for every cancer type. The registry also understated how many patients had no recorded stage: clinical audits found 38% of Māori lung cancer patients were unstaged, well above what the registry showed. A survival gap between Māori and non-Māori remained even after accounting for stage.
Why it matters: The registry undercounting missing stage data means Māori cancer outcomes cannot be fully monitored from that registry alone, which is a data problem sitting underneath the clinical one.
Limits: Based on the NZMJ abstract as fetched; full text was not read, so detail beyond the stated results and headline odds ratios is not confirmed here.
Read as: abstract, via the NZMJ journal page
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
What this collection does not cover
Each of these is a statement about the papers on this page, and about nothing else. Research may well exist on all of them. It is not held here.
No evaluation of a cancer navigator or Māori cancer support service
Nothing in this collection tests whether a navigator service or a Māori cancer support service works, for whom, or at what cost.
Several papers here argue that support of that kind is needed. The scoping review of palliative care for Māori reports that whānau-led care works better where it is free of the assumptions built into mainstream services. The Hā Ora work on lung cancer names thin health-literacy support and services that do not accommodate whānau involvement among the barriers people described. The integrative review of health service responses to Indigenous people with cancer found better access where services built culturally appropriate care around the population they served, and flags how few such studies have been published at all.
What none of them does is evaluate a service. That is the largest hole in this collection, and it sits directly under the navigator network this site already points people to.
Cancers with no paper here
This collection does not cover:
- Melanoma and skin cancer
- Head and neck cancer
- Bladder and testicular cancer
A further 3 cancers appear in a single paper each.
Life after treatment
One paper in this collection is tagged as being about living after treatment. This collection does not cover late effects, or returning to work after treatment.
Whose voice is in it
The qualitative work here reports what researchers found across groups of participants. This page summarises those papers at the level of their own findings, and carries no individual account.
Elsewhere on this site
Published rangahau is the full bibliography of members’ work, filterable by subject, year and researcher. It lists more than the papers assessed here.
Rauemi holds the organisation’s own reports and papers, alongside resources published by other organisations and linked to them.
If you are looking for a particular piece of rangahau, email communications@heiahurumowai.org.nz.