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.
3 papers in this theme
Show every themePalliative and end-of-life care
Palliative care needs and how services are built, how well organisations communicate across cultures, and where people die.
3 papers, 1 of them summarised from less than the whole paper.
Palliative care and quality of life needs and outcomes for Māori with cancer: what do we know? (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paperAlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples· 2023· doi:10.1177/11771801231163919
Rhiannon Mihi Jones, Virginia Signal, Moira Smith, Jeannine Stairmand, Cheryl Davies, Jason Gurney
scoping review of 20 New Zealand-based sources (18 articles, 2 book chapters), drawn from 126 candidates found across five databases searched to 30 June 2021, with key-informant input
Our summary of what it found
The review searched five databases, found 126 candidate papers, and narrowed to 20 New Zealand sources on palliative care and quality of life for Māori with cancer - only one of which addressed all three together. It concludes that palliative services here are built around a Western model centred on physical symptoms, which sits awkwardly against Māori concepts of wellbeing that include whānau and spiritual dimensions. It reports evidence that Māori access pain relief later in the course of illness than non-Māori, and that services often lack cultural safety. Whānau-led care is identified as working better where it is free of those same assumptions.
Why it matters: It names how thin the New Zealand evidence base is on this specific overlap - one directly relevant paper out of 126 candidates - which is itself a finding about where research effort is needed.
Limits: The review's own evidence base is thin by its own account. No PMC or Europe PMC open-access copy was found, so I cannot confirm independent of the publisher whether this article is open access; I read it on the publisher's full-text page, not an abstract.
Read as: full text (publisher page, journals.sagepub.com)
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
Where Are We Dying? Ethnic Differences in Place of Death Among New Zealanders Dying of Cancer (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paperJCO Global Oncology· 2022· doi:10.1200/GO.22.00024
Jason Kevin Gurney, James Stanley, Jonathan Koea, Jonathan Adler, June Atkinson, Diana Sarfati
national retrospective cohort, 107,373 cancer deaths, 2007-2018, logistic regression adjusted for age, sex and deprivation
Our summary of what it found
Māori dying of cancer were much more likely to die in a private residence than Europeans (46% versus 26%), and correspondingly less likely to die in a hospice inpatient unit (14% versus 27%) or residential care (12% versus 30%); they were somewhat more likely to die in hospital (27% versus 23%). Pacific patients showed a similar pattern to Māori. Asian patients were notably more likely to die in hospital (34%) than Europeans. The authors say it is not possible from this data to tell how much of this reflects genuine preference for place of death versus unequal access to hospice and residential care.
Why it matters: It puts a number on where the current pattern of end-of-life care access sits for Māori compared with other groups, without asserting a cause - useful for HAM as a factual basis for talking about hospice and residential-care access rather than assuming preference explains the gap.
Limits: The DOI/link supplied was already correct and reachable; the authors flag that preference and access cannot be separated in this dataset, and call for further research into the difference.
Read as: full text (PMC open-access copy, PMC9225597) - the link supplied (ascopubs.org, DOI 10.1200/GO.22.00024) is confirmed correct
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
Cultural health literacy: the experiences of Māori in palliative care (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the abstract· 2018
qualitative study: 21 patient/whānau interviews, 6 key informant interviews, focus groups with 54 health professionals
Our summary of what it found
This qualitative study, based on 2014 fieldwork, looked at health literacy in palliative care for Māori through individual interviews with 21 patients and whānau, six key informants, and focus groups with 54 health professionals. It found that the shock and grief after a life-limiting diagnosis made health information hard for patients and whānau to take in. Health professionals often avoided the harder conversations about moving from active treatment to palliative care, leaving patients and whānau distressed and unclear about their choices and prognosis. The authors conclude that poor cultural health literacy on the part of organisations has likely contributed to Māori accessing palliative care late, or not at all.
Why it matters: It names organisational cultural health literacy, not just individual communication skill, as a factor in late or avoided access to palliative care for Māori.
Limits: I read the abstract, not the full text. Findings are reported at the level of themes across participants; the abstract does not state that all participants' underlying illnesses were cancer specifically, though palliative care in this setting commonly involves cancer patients.
Read as: abstract (verbatim, via Europe PMC; the SAGE Journals page itself only returned site navigation when fetched directly)
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.