Jia Jenny Liu, Translational Lead of Early Phase Drug Development at The Kinghorn Cancer Centre, shared on LinkedIn:
“Discovery is not enough.
Innovation only creates impact when people can actually reach it, trust it, afford it and benefit from it.
That was my strongest takeaway from the inaugural Australian Centre for Cancer Equity – a thoughtful gathering spanning advocacy, genomics, clinical trials, implementation, workforce culture and community partnership.
Several messages stayed with me:
- Equity cannot be added at the end. Population impact requires discovery, implementation and scale to be designed together from the beginning with health systems, communities and researchers sharing responsibility.
- Access is multidimensional. The ‘4 As’ of advocacy: availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability are a useful reminder that simply offering a service does not make it equitable.
- Precision medicine can either reduce or amplify inequity. Genomic technologies and clinical trials will not automatically reach the people who could benefit most. This requires culturally safe engagement, appropriate governance and data sovereignty, translated information, navigation, inclusive protocols and meaningful measures of who are included.
- Workplace culture is also an equity issue. Burnout, discrimination, moral injury and workforce attrition affect the quality and continuity of care delivered to communities. Sustainable cancer systems must care for both patients and the people providing that care.
For those of us working in precision oncology and early-phase drug development, the challenge is increasingly clear:
The next breakthrough is not only discovering the right biomarker or therapy. It is building the system that gets the right patient to it, at the right time, in a way that is trusted and sustainable.
Congratulations to Wei Chua, Abhijit Pal, Mei Ling Yap, Shaz Sazali, Tara Roberts, Kate McBride and the AcCE team on creating an important forum for connecting research, lived experience, clinical practice and policy.”
Other articles featuring Jia Jenny Liu on OncoDaily.
