Why are some preventable cancer deaths in Māori and Pacific peoples increasing?
Work we just published shows some adverse trends in cancer deaths by ethnic group, as well as some favourable trends. In this blog we discuss some of the key findings of this research and what the options are for NZ society to address the harmful trends for obesity-related cancers, tobacco-related cancers and infection-related cancers.
We have just published an update on cancer mortality inequalities, from the New Zealand Census Mortality Study (NZCMS) and CancerTrends, in the journal BMC Cancer. The results show a changing pattern of ethnic inequalities in cancer in New Zealand.1 For every 100,000 people who identified as Māori, from 2006-11 there were more than 100 ‘excess’ cancer deaths each year that did not occur among the European/Other population. This accounts for around a total of 600 deaths per year in New Zealand and is greater than in 1981-84 when this figure was 72 excess cancer deaths per 100,000. In 2006-11, Māori men and women were 1.91 and 2.18 times more likely to die from cancer than European/Other respectively. Pacific men and women were 1.32 and 1.46 times more likely to die from cancer than European/Other.
