Improving Breast Cancer Outcomes for Indigenous Women in Australia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The theme of presented article are the plans and achievable solutions for improvement of breast cancer outcomes for Indigenous Women in Australia. The incidence rate of breast cancer is lower in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander classified as Indigenous women than non- Indigenous women in Australia. The worrisome fact is that mortality rate for Indigenous women is much higher.

The authors provided practical recommendations for adaptation of screening, treatment and follow up programs for breast cancer to improve screening rates, improve health outcomes and survival rates of the Indigenous women in Australia.

The theme of the presented article of great importance and addresses an important and timely topic, since there is a necessity for increasing awareness about breast cancer and providing accessibility to healthcare and screening especially in most deprived areas.

The article is well written, fluent and well organized. The language is clear and reader-friendly. The reference list covers the relevant literature with recently published articles.

 I have no objections, in my opinion this study is suitable for publication in the current form.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments regarding the paper. We too believe it is important and appreciate the feedback. 

Kind regards

Vita Christie

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors present a work addressing: ‘Improving Breast Cancer Outcomes for Indigenous Women in Australia’. This is an interesting study. However, the paper presents a few major issues including:

1. I believe that the abstract should be modified, there is no need to reveal the heart of the entire paper in the abstract, i.e nine practical ways to improve health outcomes and survival rates. Since authors repeat the same info in lines 149-164.
2. I would recommend the authors to re-organize all the tables and figures in order to increase readability.
3. Please provide subsections in the methodology section including, Study design, Patients/Protocol selection, Procedures and assessment, etc.
4. What is the novelty of this study? and how your outcomes can help further studies in this area. Please add a brief explanation of the novelty of this study in the introduction section.
5. Please also describe in the first paragraph of the results: Protocol description.
6. Please in discussion section add paragraph related to how we can applicate your results into practice?, why your work is valuable in the field? and how can we generalize the results?

Minor:
1. Please provide the limitations of the study.

Author Response

Thank you for the review of our paper. Please find below our responses and an updated manuscript attached. 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I recommend to accept the manuscriptin it’s present form.