Where do our key political parties stand on breast cancer?
With the General Election coming up in October, we want New Zealanders to know where our key political parties stand when it comes to breast cancer.
We know what changes are needed to address the biggest challenges in breast cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment. With this in mind, we surveyed the parties likely to be represented in the next Parliament, asking how they plan to tackle these issues.
We’ve analysed and graded their responses, and published these in our new resource, the Breast Cancer Policy Scorecard. It provides accessible information about how political parties intend to tackle breast cancer.
ACT, Green, Labour, National & NZ First are represented on our scorecard. We also sent our survey to Te Pāti Māori & The Opportunities Party but they didn’t answer our questions.
Given the parties have not yet finalised their election manifestos, we’ll be surveying them again closer to the election and we’ll update the scorecard with what we hope will be firmer commitments and more detail.
Disclaimer: Breast Cancer Foundation NZ does not support or oppose any particular political party or advise people on how to vote.
If you want to read all of the parties' full responses, you can do so here.
Our top five advocacy priorities
The questions in our survey reflected our top 5 advocacy priorities – the policies and interventions we think will have the most impact to change outcomes for breast cancer survival in Aotearoa:
- Extending the free mammogram screening age to include women aged 70-74.
- Equity in access to screening and diagnosis which includes starting screening earlier for Māori and Pacific women.
- Every New Zealander to have access to timely diagnosis of breast cancer, including investment to allow all patients to be diagnosed within 28 days of specialist referral.
- Every New Zealander to have access to timely treatment for breast cancer.
- Funded access to highly strategic breast cancer drugs.