Equity in cancer outcomes has become a major focus of national cancer control plans around the world. Several countries, including Australia in its new 2024–2034 cancer plan, have identified people with disability as a priority group.
Evidence from international studies highlights that people with disability experienced higher cancer mortality rates compared to people without disability, and cancer patients with disability had poorer survival outcomes compared to their peers without disability. One potential contributing factor is the consistently low uptake of cancer screening, which can lead to delayed diagnosis and a poorer prognosis for people with disability.
Join this talk to learn how nationwide linked electronic data on disability and death registrations can be used to examine cancer mortality inequalities experienced by people with disability in Australia.
Dr Disney is a Senior Research Fellow at the Melbourne Disability Institute. He also serves as the Head of Equity Epidemiology Unit at the Centre for Health Equity in Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. His research focuses on analysing the determinants of the (avoidable) gap in health between people with and without disabilities. Much of that research focuses on how the government could and should act on the social determinants of health to reduce health inequalities for people with disability.
Dr Yang is a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Disability Institute. Her research focuses on quantifying health inequalities faced by people with disability using data and identifying potential interventions to close these inequalities. She leads a program of work aimed at examining disability-related cancer inequalities in Australia using nationally linked electronic data.
