Disability and Cancer Care

Executive summary

All Australians affected by cancer should be supported to access and receive optimal cancer care. Around 4.4 million people (18%) in Australia live with disability.¹ Many people living with disability will be affected by cancer in their lifetime, but will often experience delays or inequities in cancer screening, diagnostic tests, treatment, and survivorship care, resulting in poor health outcomes.^{2, 3}

This policy focuses on the experiences of people with disability and the issues that remain unaddressed by the Australian healthcare and social support systems to enable their equitable access to optimal cancer care.

The policy priorities identified here aim to improve understanding of the experiences of people with disability undergoing cancer care:

Acknowledgements

Cancer Council would like to acknowledge the following people for their contribution to this policy on disability and cancer care.

Cancer Council extends its appreciation to those people and organisations that contributed to developing this policy chapter but have asked not to be identified for privacy and other reasons.

Cancer Council acknowledges the importance of co-design in developing policy priorities and that more work needs to be done to understand the needs of disability-representative organisations and people with lived experience of disability. Cancer Council remains committed to supporting the implementation of these policy priorities and ensuring they continually reflect and achieve the community's needs. During the development of this policy, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability report was ongoing, which presented a challenge to engage with the community. However, we have tried to reflect on the issues and findings of the commission in this policy.

External reviewers:

Associate Professor Shane Clifton - Sydney School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health

This policy has been approved by the CEO of Cancer Council Australia.

Policy review period

This policy was published on 31 March 2025.

This policy will be updated as required as new information and evidence is available. A full review will be considered every 3 years, with this next review due to commence in 2028.

If you have any questions about this policy, email: cancercontrolpolicy@cancer.org.au.