Key Priorities

Equity in and access to health and medical research 

Australia cannot achieve health excellence without health equity. Whether defined by geography, income, gender, cultural background, education or other factors, barriers to accessing health expertise persist — and they limit our potential as a nation. Ensuring fair and inclusive access to medical research, expertise and care is central to our mission.

Achieving true equity requires confronting several entrenched and intersecting barriers, including:

Persistent rural and regional health disparities
Underrepresentation of marginalised communities in research and leadership
Gender inequity and systemic racism in research, the health and research workforce, and decision-making roles
Disconnection between healthcare delivery and community needs

We are driving policy and system change to close these gaps, through:

The development of a Decadal Plan for Advancing Women in the Health and Medical Sciences
Ongoing engagement with Indigenous, rural and regional, and culturally and linguistically diverse communities
Supporting a diverse next generation of clinician-researchers through programs like Life as a Clinician-Scientist
Advocating for inclusive research design, participation and leadership

AAHMS

Focus Areas

Achieving health equity is essential for the wellbeing of individual Australian communities and our collective ability to thrive and innovate.
The Academy works to dismantle the barriers to equitable access to health and medical research, enabling us to flourish together.

Gender Equity

The Academy released our statement on climate change and health in April 2022. Our work on this project began following the devastating summer of 2019-2020, when bushfires burned more than 17 million hectares of Australian land, AAHMS brought together Fellows and other experts from across health and medicine to identify the health impacts. Our aim was to increase understanding of the short, medium and long-term impacts on health, and identify gaps in this understanding – especially where they relate to the actions needed to support individual and community recovery.