Oral Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2022

Diversity, inclusion and delivering equitable cancer care for all Australians – how do we put it together in clinic next week? (#129)

Abhijit Pal 1 2
  1. Liverpool Hospital, Sydney South West Local Health District, Liverpool, NSW, Australia
  2. Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

There is growing awareness that cancer care needs to be tailored and individualised to patients with particular backgrounds (Aboriginal, CALD, LGBTQI+) in order to achieve equity in care for all Australians.  It is clear from the existing research that each of these groups faces significant challenges in accessing cancer services in Australia at every step with clear and persistent inequities in cancer outcomes and key performance indicators including time to diagnosis, access to screening, access to treatment and clinical trial access.  While each group has specific needs that need to be addressed – progress is likely going to be faster if oncology services commit to serving all these groups as opposed to one group at a time.  This talk summarises an approach to diversity training and enhancing competency in improving the accessibility of an oncology service for diverse populations.  The first key principle is measuring and recording data to ensure a service is aware of the volume of patients from each minority in their particular catchment.  The second principle, is that sites need to perform a self assessment to examine the current procedures in place for managing each group (eg. access to Aboriginal Liaison Officers, access to sexuality and gender training for oncology staff or easy access to interpreters). Finally, a system for ensuring quality which involves measuring, intervening and re-measuring is proposed.  Each service likely needs a diversity champion and organisations should take steps to actively fund and support this position.  Finally, it is clear that no progress is possible without funding, resourcing and monitoring - it is likely that diversity policies need to become standard of care across oncology services and part of routine processes such as college accreditation.