Leukaemia Foundation: Tackling the Blood Cancer Care Gap

The Leukaemia Foundation (the Foundation) has been at the forefront of supporting those affected by blood cancer for nearly five decades. As it celebrates its 50th anniversary, the Foundation reflects on its achievements but is acutely aware of the challenges still ahead.

One of the most pressing issues currently facing the Foundation and the blood cancer

community is the persistent gap in access to early detection, diagnosis, and treatment, particularly for those living in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia.

Blood cancers such as leukaemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, while often less visible than other cancers, pose a serious threat to the Australian population. Existing healthcare systems have not been equipped to deal with the growing incidence of these diseases, especially outside metropolitan regions.

The Leukaemia Foundation’s new early detection blood cancer control program is an innovative approach to bridging this gap, with a particular focus on early diagnosis and intervention. The Regional Access to Care for Haematology (ReACH) program aims to save lives and change the trajectory of blood cancer outcomes, particularly in areas where healthcare resources and education about the disease are lacking.

The challenge of blood cancer

Tim Murphy, General Manager Blood Cancer Partnerships at the Leukaemia Foundation,

handles the external advocacy, strategy and research aspects of the foundation. He shares his role involves “thinking about the lived experience of the 150,000 or so Australians who live with blood cancer” finding methods to reduce these mortality rates, such as funding research into new treatments, new care/monitoring opportunities and considering what policy settings to have in place with the Australian federal and state governments on healthcare delivery.

The scope of blood cancers is vast, with over 120 types of blood cancers in existence. Despite their high incidence, blood cancers remain one of the most under-recognised and under-addressed health concerns in Australia.

“When you look at blood cancers together, they become the third highest by incidence across the country,” Mr Murphy states.

For the Leukaemia Foundation, this realisation is a call to action. “We have a goal in the blood cancer community of zero life lost to blood cancer by 2035” says Mr Murphy.

Why early detection matters

One of the key difficulties in addressing blood cancers is their nature: they are spontaneous and unpredictable. Unlike other cancers, there are no predisposition markers or genetic tests that can identify someone at higher risk for blood cancer.

“Blood cancers are fascinating, but they are also incredibly challenging,” Mr Murphy remarks. Without any early warning signs, patients often do not seek medical advice until symptoms become severe, by which point treatment becomes far less effective.

Traditionally, public health initiatives like cancer screenings and early detection programs have been used to combat the early stages of diseases, with considerable success. However, blood cancers do not currently lend themselves to traditional screening protocols. “We’ve looked at what has worked for other cancers, like breast cancer or melanoma, and we realised that these public health programs are not directly applicable to blood cancers because they don't have the same set of risk factors,” Mr Murphy explains.

With blood cancers, early symptoms can be vague and overlap with other common illnesses, making it difficult for both patients and healthcare professionals to identify the disease in its early stages. As a result, many Australians (particularly those living outside major metropolitan areas) present for treatment far too late.

Addressing the regional and remote care gap

One of the most critical challenges in providing effective treatment for blood cancer patients is the geographical disparity in healthcare access. Australians living in regional, rural and remote areas face significant barriers to timely diagnosis and care.

“The survival rate for people who live in regional, rural and remote areas is lower than for those in the cities,” says Mr Murphy.

This inequity in healthcare delivery is not limited to blood cancer—people in rural and remote areas across Australia often face challenges in accessing timely healthcare due to geographic isolation, limited healthcare infrastructure, and the difficulty of traveling long distances for treatment.

The Leukaemia Foundation’s ReACH Program aims to address these challenges by

ensuring that early detection and comprehensive care is available to all Australians, no

matter where they live.

With the launch of the ReACH Program, the Foundation has designed a strategy specifically tailored for regional, rural and remote communities. By bringing together community healthcare providers, including GPs, allied health practitioners, and the general public, the program seeks to create a more integrated and proactive approach to early detection.

Innovative solutions for early detection

One of the most groundbreaking aspects of the Leukaemia Foundation’s ReACH Program is the development of a Decision Support Tool. This electronic tool is designed to assist GPs in identifying the likelihood of blood cancer based on a patient’s reported symptoms. “It’s like piecing a puzzle together,” Mr Murphy says, referring to the tool’s algorithm, which compares symptom combinations and matches them against data to calculate the probability of a blood cancer diagnosis.

This tool is aimed at improving the decision making process for GPs, particularly in regional areas where practitioners may have limited time to thoroughly investigate every symptom. Integrating with the GP’s existing system, the tool acts as a second layer of support, helping healthcare professionals identify early warning signs more efficiently.

The tool also encourages early intervention, which could significantly improve outcomes for patients. By prompting GPs to order blood tests sooner, before the disease progresses too far, the program aims to catch blood cancers in their early stages, when treatment is most likely to succeed. As Mr Murphy notes, “Once someone has a blood test at an early stage of blood cancer, the indicators are all there in the blood, and the prognosis can be much better.”

In addition to the Decision Support Tool, the program incorporates a community-based model to encourage people in regional and remote areas to seek medical help earlier. This involves educating allied health practitioners such as dentists, physiotherapists, and chiropractors on the signs and symptoms of blood cancer, so they can encourage individuals in their communities to visit a GP. This ‘more eyes on the patient’ approach is designed to ensure that more people are brought into the healthcare system sooner, even if they are hesitant to see a doctor. Mr Murphy explains: “If someone is seeing a physiotherapist or chiropractor for back pain, but they also have unexplained weight loss or night sweats, these allied health professionals can encourage them to seek further testing from a GP.”

The program has recently been launched in Western New South Wales, an area that represents a discrete population where the system’s effectiveness can be carefully evaluated. “We launched this program in December 2024, and it’s still very early days,” says Mr Murphy. However, the early feedback is promising, and the Foundation is cautiously optimistic that the approach can be scaled up to other regions in the future.

“We want to make sure we’ve got a strong data set to demonstrate the effectiveness of this intervention,” Mr Murphy explains.

The team is working closely with healthcare providers in the region to test and refine the model before any broader rollout. Early signs indicate that the model has the potential to reduce delays in diagnosis and improve survival rates for those who are diagnosed with blood cancer.

Future directions and scaling up

While the program is still in its initial stages, the Leukaemia Foundation has big plans for its future. Scaling up the program nationwide will be a critical next step, and the Foundation is actively working to secure the funding and partnerships required to make that happen. “Once we prove that this model works in regional areas, the goal is to make this the new standard of care across the entire country,” Mr Murphy states. This program has the potential not only to transform the way blood cancer is detected and treated but also to offer a model that can be applied to other low-survival cancers as well.

The role of facility managers in supporting the program

As the program progresses, the Leukaemia Foundation is calling for greater support from

various sectors, particularly healthcare and aged care facilities. “We operate because of the generosity of the Australian public,” Mr Murphy says, acknowledging the vital role that funding plays in sustaining their work.

Facility managers across the country, particularly those involved in health and aged care, can play a crucial role by helping raise awareness of blood cancer symptoms, encouraging early detection, and supporting the efforts of the Leukaemia Foundation in their local communities.

Blood cancer can affect anyone at any age, and particularly in aged care settings, the symptoms may be misdiagnosed. For older Australians, the signs of blood cancer can often be confused with the normal aging process. Mr Murphy advises: “If you see symptoms such as unexplained weight loss, night sweats, or unusual bruising,

encourage individuals to visit their GP.” Early intervention is critical to improving the chances of blood cancer survival.

Quotes attributable to Tim Murphy, General Manager, Blood Cancer Partnerships at the Leukaemia Foundation

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