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.
5 papers in this theme
Show every themePrevention and co-occurring conditions
Smoking cessation, the infections behind liver and stomach cancer, and what it means when diabetes and cancer occur in the same person.
5 papers.
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.
Effectiveness of nicotine salt vapes, cytisine, and a combination of these products, for smoking cessation in New Zealand: protocol for a three-arm, pragmatic, community-based randomised controlled trial (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paper· 2023
protocol for a single-blind, pragmatic, three-arm randomised controlled trial, target N=800, allocated 3:3:2
Our summary of what it found
This is a trial protocol, not yet a results paper. It sets out a plan to compare nicotine-salt vapes plus cytisine against either product alone for smoking cessation, in daily smokers aged 18 and over who want to quit within two weeks. All three arms also get six months of text-message-based behavioural support. The primary outcome will be continuous abstinence at six months, verified by carbon monoxide testing.
Why it matters: Smoking is the largest single driver of preventable cancer, and the protocol specifically targets Māori and Pacific participants through stratified randomisation and targeted promotion, citing prior New Zealand cytisine research that showed benefit specifically for Māori smokers.
Limits: As a protocol, there are no effectiveness results yet to report. The authors themselves note budget constraints meant no 12-month follow-up for all participants, no text-only control arm, no cluster-randomised design, and no ecological momentary assessment.
Read as: full text (via the open-access PMC mirror, PMC10494376, after the publisher's own page and a Springer login redirect both failed)
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 past, present and future of liver cancer control for Māori (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paperNew Zealand Medical Journal· 2022· doi:10.26635/6965.5852
Sydney Clough, Tara Cleverley, Clarence Kerrison, Matire Harwood, Jonathan Koea, Jason K Gurney
narrative literature review (viewpoint), no new primary data
Our summary of what it found
The paper reviews why liver cancer hits Māori harder: it is one of the top five causes of Māori cancer death, and incidence keeps rising for Māori while staying flat for non-Māori. It traces this to hepatitis B and C, which drive about 80% of hepatocellular carcinoma, and to gaps in New Zealand's response - as of 2018 an estimated 333,906 Māori over 30 remained unvaccinated for hepatitis B, and only 19% of people with hepatitis B nationally were enrolled in monitoring by late 2019. The authors call for a nationally coordinated primary-care programme to detect and treat hepatitis B and C and screen high-risk patients, run with Māori-led vaccination and engagement rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Why it matters: It sets out a specific, actionable gap - the absence of coordinated national hepatitis screening and surveillance - as the main lever behind Māori liver cancer outcomes, rather than treating the disparity as unexplained.
Limits: A narrative rather than systematic review, so it summarises prior published figures (some, like the 2018 vaccination count, are now several years old) rather than presenting new analysis; full text read in full.
Read as: full text (PDF read in full, via nzmj.org.nz)
Written for this website from the paper, not the authors’ abstract.
Ethnic Inequity in the Current Approach to H. pylori Testing and Treatment: Linked Data Cohort Analysis (opens in a new tab)
Summarised from the whole paper
retrospective linked cohort analysis, 7,024,858 person-years, 89,067 first H. pylori tests
Our summary of what it found
H. pylori testing rates were lowest for Māori and Pacific people compared with sole-European, even though positivity when tested was higher for Pacific, MELAA and Māori. Treatment rates were broadly similar across groups but lower for Pacific people, who also had lower retesting rates. The authors describe the current opportunistic approach to testing as itself a driver of these gaps.
Why it matters: Gastric cancer already carries some of the widest ethnic mortality gaps in the country, and this paper traces part of that gap back to who gets tested for its main modifiable risk factor in the first place.
Limits: The authors note undercounting of Māori in the health service user data, no ability to capture private (non-publicly funded) testing, and limited breakdown within ethnic subgroups.
Read as: Full text via PMC mirror (PMC11718595)
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.