Healthspans – the concept of how long we live healthy lives – vary significantly across Australia and globally. This is primarily due to socioeconomic disparities, location and inequitable access to essential resources like education, nutritious food and healthcare, including the latest advancements in medicine.
Drawing on our history in research, such as our work to eliminate cervical cancer, and education, such as training a significant proportion of NSW’s doctors, over the next decade UNSW will make significant contributions to enabling healthy lives for people in communities in Australia and around the world.
Our aspiration will be to deliver substantial improvements in human healthspans and longevity. UNSW will continue to employ the breadth of our deep discipline-specific knowledge and interdisciplinary education, research and engagement. This will encompass every faculty of the University from biomedical engineering to the built environment, law and justice, and more.
Through collaboration with expert partners, we will help to develop a workforce that delivers better health and wellbeing outcomes for our communities, locally and globally.
We will be a leader in our contribution to the Societal Impact Goals:
- Increase healthy lifespans of all Australians by two years, and those in underrepresented and minority populations in Australia and the region by three years.
- Reduce by one-third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases.
- Achieve health equity for priority populations.
Objectives
1. Progress world-class discovery and translation in precision medicine and health technology, by:
- working at the forefront of scientific, clinical, societal, computational and technical research in molecular medicine, advanced therapeutics, health technology and other areas of research
- applying our discoveries, with our partners and collaborators, to improve human wellbeing.
2. Foster education across all disciplines for better health and a future-focused workforce, by:
- enhancing professional and community knowledge through targeted programs delivered in collaboration with our research and industry partners in important areas such as genomic medicine
- promoting the development of the precision medicine workforce through distinct health and non-health professional offerings
- leading in Australia for the number of entrepreneurial clinician and non-clinician scientists we graduate who have advanced capabilities in translation and commercialisation.
3. Work with local and global communities to advance better health and wellbeing, by:
- bringing together UNSW’s multidisciplinary capabilities to achieve breakthroughs in prevention, care and treatment for chronic diseases such as dementia
- supporting Indigenous community-led programs
- promoting strategies that enable access to wellbeing and healthcare advances for women, culturally and linguistically diverse peoples, people with disabilities or disabling conditions, and people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds.
4. Design, test and deliver integrated health solutions and systems at our health precincts, by:
- continuing to be world leaders in healthcare innovation
- integrating discoveries into clinical care and accelerating improvements in health services with our partners.
Flagship initiatives
The future of health: the UNSW Health Translation Hub and health precincts
UNSW will lead Australia and the world in building new multidisciplinary, collaborative approaches to healthcare that improve wellbeing outcomes. This is through a $1 billion commitment over the next five years spanning Greater Sydney and regional locations, including in Murrumbidgee, Port Macquarie and Albury-Wodonga. The UNSW Health Translation Hub, a multi-faculty collaboration with medical research institutes and government partners, will bring the benefits of research expertise directly to professional training and patient care.
A UNSW Mission: Precision Medicine
UNSW will embark on a multidisciplinary, multisector ‘Precision Medicine Mission’, bringing together our distinctive capabilities in computational AI, science, engineering, clinical genomics, health systems and technical genomic facilities. This Mission will focus on having a transformational impact in molecular oncology, rare and chronic diseases, and infectious diseases, with lifechanging health benefits for generations to come.
Working together for community-led Indigenous health
Over the next 10 years we will continue to work across Sydney, greater NSW and the ACT to tackle challenges and improve equity through community-led, culturally safe and impactful research. From the success of initiatives like Yuwaya Ngarra-li and GeneEQUAL, we know how critical it is to work in partnership with communities on priorities that matter the most to them.
Get in touch
Our Strategy was designed by our UNSW community, for our UNSW community so we want everyone to get involved. Please get in touch to discuss the Strategy or ask any questions.