Measuring cancer in Indigenous populations

A recent symposium held in Wellington, New Zealand, brought experts together from across the region with the aim of providing an accurate and up-to-date picture of how cancer impacts on the Indigenous peoples of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.One of the issues under discussion was how best to measure this impact.In the post below, three of the authors of a recent paper on this topic, Indigenous health epidemiology and cancer researchers Dr Kalinda Griffiths, Dr Suzanne Moore and Professor Gail Garvey, explain why cancer surveillance in Indigenous populations can be prone to several sources of bias.They also provide advice on the ethical collection and use of accurate data, with the aim of reducing the burden of cancer in Indigenous populations, both worldwide and in Australia.