Professor Bev Lawton wearing the kākahu (cloak) presented to the New Zealander of the Year. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Aotearoa needs to "up its game" when it comes to Māori women's health, according to the New Zealander of the Year.
A pioneer in women's health, Professor Bev Lawton ONZM is the founder and director of Te Tātai Hauora o Hine (National Centre for Women's Health Research Aotearoa) at Victoria University of Wellington.
She has lead critical advancements in cervical cancer screening, including advocating for the shift to HPV self-testing, and indigenous health equity.
Lawton (Ngāti Porou) said the month since she became Kiwibank's New Zealander of the Year had been a busy one.
"But what has really got to me is really that woman have taken this as a award for women's health... Strangers have come up to me and said 'this is so good for women' and I think that's great. We need to get on that waka," she said.
Lawton said Aotearoa needed to "up its game" when it came to improving the health inequities that acutely affected Māori women.
System issues, clinical issues, rurality and racism were just some of the barriers that had lead to those health inequities, she said.
But Lawton said the things that excited her about her mahi was picking apart those issues to find one she could help address. She has led the charge in cervical cancer screening, an area where she said wāhine Māori have been affected far more acutely.
"It's very exciting that we've got this HPV self testing program which makes it accessible for many, many wahine. And that's Māori or non Māori and they just love it. 81 percent of women are choosing to do a self test. It's pretty exciting, but we're not there yet. We need to get rid of this devastating disease."
The first year's results showed there had been a big uptake in HPV self-testing by Māori and Pasifika women, she said.
While HPV self-testing will help improve outcomes for wāhine, New Zealand still lacked a plan to eliminate cervical cancer, she said.
"For cervical cancer, it's there, it's written, the WHO has written it. Australia has a fully funded elimination plan. We do not have a cervical cancer elimination plan and that is not right, it's not just and it's not cost effective because we know that to eliminate cervical cancer saves money."
Lawton holding the New Zealander of the Year award. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Lawton believed that eliminating cervical cancer was achievable. New Zealand could reasonably eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem - which was less than 4 cases per 100,000 people - by 2035, she said.
"I just don't understand why we're not doing it and making a commitment to do it like many countries are."
New Zealand needed to prioritise an elimination plan, she said. That would include boosting vaccination and putting more resources into screening, as it was currently not free for all women to have a screen, she said.
"If this was a swab and a vaccine and you could eliminate prostate cancer, you'd be in and it would happen tomorrow," she said.
Lawton said whenever a women entered hospital and was diagnosed cervical cancer, that should be a serious adverse event, meaning in the hospital sense that should not have happened.
"We should look at all that clinical care pathway. Why that wahine got there? Because somewhere in the system something has failed her."
Lawton said for now she and many other wāhine were waiting to stand behind the government when it announced a fully-resourced elimination strategy for cervical cancer.
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