Welcome to the December 2023 newsletter. In this edition:

• A message from our President
• AAHMS highlights
• AAHMS Annual Meeting Survey
• Congratulations
• Fellows in the news

A message from our President

I write to you with our last AAHMS news of 2023. This year
was a significant one for the Academy – we announced a new
award honouring First Nations researchers, relaunched our Life as a
Clinician-Scientist program with great success, welcomed our 100th
mentee, and saw our policy
work continue to have impact on the nation’s healthcare systems. The
Academy’s work is a reflection of the hard work, expertise, and commitment of
its Fellows, and I’m immensely proud of all we have achieved this year. You can
see some of the highlights from the past 12 months on our website – this
article summarises some of our larger pieces of work. It’s an excellent
overview of a very busy year, and a great way of celebrating all we’ve achieved
together. I encourage you to take a look. You
can also visit our news
page to see all the significant work completed in 2023.

One of our major events was the 2023 Annual Meeting: Driving
health equity. For those of you who were unable to join us in person, videos
from each session are now available online in
our video library. Whether you were able to attend, or couldn’t make it
this year, we’d value your feedback for future events. You can contribute by
completing a survey here or email our Events Manager Leila Hutton at [email protected]. Next year’s
annual meeting will be held in Adelaide and will mark 10 years of the
Academy. I do hope to see lots of you there so that we can celebrate everything
we’ve achieved together over the past decade and look ahead to how the Academy
can be a force for good into the future. Mark the dates in your calendar
now: 24-25 October. Further details to follow in the new year.

Finally, I wish you safe, restful, and happy holidays with
your loved ones. It’s been a pleasure working alongside you this year, and I
look forward to all we will achieve in 2024.

Best wishes,

Professor Louise Baur AM PresAHMS

AAHMS highlights

Catch up on some of the Academy’s major work in 2023 in our highlights article.
We:

• Inspired
  record-breaking audiences with our Life as a Clinician-Scientist program
•  Provided expert evidence to guide the long
  COVID response
•  Launched
  our Outstanding First Nations Researcher Medal
•  Advocated for a big picture strategy to
  improve health research and innovation
•  Celebrated
  translational medicine with the Jian Zhou Medal
•  Welcomed
  our 100th mentee
•  Honoured
  Professor Rachelle Buchbinder with the Outstanding Female Researcher Medal
•  Proposed
  a path to improve Australia’s mental health
•  Were
  joined by 27 new Fellows
•  Sought
  to improve health equity, our annual meeting’s key topic

AAHMS Annual Meeting Survey

Did you join us at our Annual Meeting in October? We would welcome your thoughts and feedback on the event. The survey is anonymous and information will be used to improve future events. Find the survey online here.

Congratulations

Professors Richard Scolyer and Georgina Long were named the
joint NSW
Australians of the Year.

Professor Helen Marshall was named the SA Scientist of the
Year at the SA
Science Excellence and Innovation Awards.

Professor Michelle Haber was honoured
with the Lifetime Achievement Award at CEO Magazine’s Executive of the Year
Awards in Sydney.

Professor Mark Dawson received the Paul
Marks Prize for Cancer Research.

Fellows in the news

Professor Laura Mackay’s breakthrough immunotherapy research was covered across several media outlets. Read the original media release on the Doherty news site.

Professors Richard Scolyer and Georgina Long were profiled on Australian Story.

Professor Sharon Lewin co-authored a piece for COSMOS on the science contributing to a HIV cure.

Professor Andrew Whitehouse will guide a review of the WA government’s School Education Act 1999 to better serve and safeguard students with disability.

Professor Stephen Duckett authored a piece for The Conversation on the National Health Reform Agreement. He also wrote a piece on how Australia’s healthcare system compared internationally.

Professor Brendan Crabb co-authored a piece on the effect of antivirals on long COVID for The Conversation.