New Nursing Equity Assessment Tool for Cancer Care
A team of researchers led by Prof Mei Krishnasamy from the Department of Nursing has developed a novel checklist – The Nursing Equity Assessment Tool (the NEAT). This checklist is used at the point of care to support nurses to quickly and systematically identify people who experience disadvantageous social determinants of health.
Published in February 2025, the second in a series of planned papers from the work reporting on the clinical utility of the NEAT was circulated in ’Supportive Care in Cancer’ an internationally leading cancer journal. In the month following its publication, this research was the most downloaded paper from the Cancer Nurses Society of Australia’s online portal, an organisation representing the 7,000 cancer nurses across Australia.
A mixed methods case series, the study involved 37 people with a range of cancers and seven clinical nurse consultants involved in their care. Data generated through qualitative approaches, patient reported outcome measures and medical record data demonstrated the utility (acceptability, applicability and practicability) of the NEAT. The data also provided early indication of the NEAT’s potential to identify individuals at risk of complex care needs because of biomedical factors and disadvantageous social determinants of health.
The real-world impact of this research cannot be underestimated. Whilst Australia has some of the best cancer outcomes in the world, (with almost 71% of people expected to survive at least five years after a diagnosis of cancer), these outcomes are not experienced equitably. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to be diagnosed with and die from cancer compared with non-Indigenous Australians,and this gap is widening. Similarly, people whose preferred language isn’t English, asylum seekers and migrants, those living in regional and rural areas, experiencing poverty, isolation, mental health issues and homelessness all experience worse cancer outcomes compared to white European Australians. The NEAT serves to identify and mitigate these risks for Australia’s most vulnerable populations.
Work is currently underway to establish cultural validity of the NEAT and to develop clinical prompts to support implementation of the NEAT in usual care.
