Poster Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2022

A call to action: improve cancer outcomes through increased research funding awarded for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and culturally diverse communities   (#255)

Tilini Gunatillake 1 , Kalinda Griffiths 1 , Vijaya Joshi 1 , Jennifer Philip 1
  1. VCCC Alliance, Parkville, VICTORIA, Australia

Aim
To describe the research funding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Culturally Diverse Communities and cancer projects relative to overall grant funding.

Methods
Major Australian grant funding databases were reviewed across a 5-year period (2016-2020):

    • National Health Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
    • Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF)
    • Australian Research Council (ARC)
  • The following terms were used across the databases to identify relevant grants (including project grants and fellowships):
    • “Indigenous”, “First Nation”, “Aboriginal”, “Torres Strait Islander”, “CALD”, “Culturally and Linguistically Diverse”, “Migrant”, “Refugee”,
    • “Cancer”

Results

In the 5-year period, 13,078 grants were awarded across the 3 funding agencies. Just 2.9% of NHMRC grants, 5.4% of MRFF grants and 0.2% of ARC grants were awarded to projects related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Only 1 grant (0.1%) from NHMRC and MRFF and no grants from ARC were awarded to projects related to culturally and linguistically diverse communities.

Further interrogation of those projects specifically related to cancer revealed that only 9 grants overall (0.06%) were awarded to a project related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and 2 grants overall (0.02%) were awarded to projects related to culturally diverse communities.


Conclusions

There remains persistent inequity in cancer outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and culturally diverse communities in Australia. This review of grant funding highlights this inequity as demonstrated by the paucity of research funding allocated towards these communities.

This study provides the foundation to better understand the drivers of inequity in the research pipeline and the systems that may perpetuate this inequity. This study raises awareness and promotes the need for initiatives by research funding bodies to directly address these inequities in research development targeting cancer outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and culturally diverse communities in Australia.