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 Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences has released a landmark ten-year roadmap to advance equity and leadership representation for women across the nation’s health and medical sciences (HMS) ecosystem. The Women in the Health and Medical Sciences: Decadal Plan outlines a system-wide strategy to dismantle barriers, improve leadership pathways and embed accountability across the sector.