The New Zealand PIPER Project: colorectal cancer survival according to rurality, ethnicity and socioeconomic deprivation results from a retrospective cohort study
Katrina Sharples, Melissa Firth, Victoria Hinder, Andrew Hill, Mark Jeffery, Diana Sarfati, Charis Brown, Carol Atmore, Ross Lawrenson, Papaarangi Reid, Sarah Derrett, Jerome Macapagel, John Keating, Adrian Secker, Charles De Groot, Christopher Jackson, Michael Findlay
Colorectal cancer (bowel cancer) is one of New Zealand s most common and deadly cancers, and we have poorer survival than Australia. The PIPER project is the largest and most detailed study of bowel cancer undertaken in New Zealand. In the second of many publications from this project, we report differences in outcome between Mori, Pacific and non-Mori non-Pacific. We found Mori and Pacific people were more likely to die from bowel cancer than non-Mori mostly because their cancers were detected later, and they were much more likely to be diagnosed as an emergency than non-Mori. This suggests that earlier diagnosis for Mori and Pacific needs to be a focus to improve outcomes for these groups.