Health Horizons Forum
Exploring future opportunities and challenges that could transform the health of the Australian community
What are the next big ideas in health, research and innovation – and how will these impact the community in the coming decades?
AAHMS has launched a horizon scanning project to explore future opportunities and challenges with key industry leaders, influencers and government policymakers. This project has been made possible through a partnership with Saltire Capital Partners.
The Health Horizons Forum will involve a series of roundtables during 2023, bringing together stakeholders from across the Australian health sector, government, research, innovation and industry.
The forum will harness the expertise of AAHMS Fellows, Associate Members and other experts, and will facilitate cross-sector collaboration to identify the next big ideas that could transform the health of the Australian community in the coming decades.
Innovation in mental health
On 9 March 2023, we officially launched the Health Horizons Forum with our roundtable on innovation in mental health – the first of four events planned in 2023.
The roundtable brought together some the nation’s top mental health experts to discuss innovation in mental health, with a focus on identifying new Australian innovations, potential future innovations, and barriers to implementation.
Learn about highlights from this event in this news article. A report summarising the key outputs from the roundtable will be made available shortly.
Advancing prevention in Australia
Our next roundtable will take place on 26 July in Sydney, with a focus on preventive strategies to improve the health of all in the community. This event will be chaired by renowned public health expert, Professor Don Nutbeam FAHMS, Executive Director of Sydney Health Partners and Professor of Public Health at The University of Sydney.
The roundtable, Advancing prevention in Australia, will bring together some of the country’s top experts in the sector with policymakers and industry leaders to discuss opportunities and limitations around advancing current strategies for prevention in Australia, as well as key knowledge gaps and challenges.
Supporting research translation
Our 2022 report, Research and innovation as core functions in transforming the health system: A vision for the future of health in Australia, outlined a vision for embedding research and innovation in health. The Health Horizons Forum will build on this work to scan the horizon and identify some of the most promising fields of research and innovation in Australia that could help address the health challenges of tomorrow.
In 2022, we launched a survey with our Fellows and Associate Members to identify key topics and highly promising areas of research and innovation that could transform the health of the Australian – and potentially global – community.
Based on this input, we are launching four roundtables in 2023, starting with innovation in mental health. Beyond shaping future work of the Academy, we expect this project to make the following impact:
- Explore emerging areas of research and innovation that could transform the nation’s health over the coming decades by bringing together the latest evidence from a range of fields
- Identify emerging policy issues, opportunities and challenges across sectors to share with industry and government
- Connect stakeholders across the Australian health sector to facilitate future research, commercialisation, and innovation incubation.
The Health Horizons project is overseen by the Academy’s Policy Advice Committee.