Australia's health 2026

From the many possible stories that could be told about Australia’s health, this report highlights 6 focus areas. Together, they illustrate contemporary and emerging issues that are central to understanding the health of the nation. A summary of each focus area is included below.

Focus area 1: Understanding chronic conditions: patterns, prevention and outcomes

Improvements in living conditions, medical care and public health have contributed to longer lives in Australia. With Australians living longer, a growing number of people are living with chronic conditions. These conditions have lasting and persistent effects and require regular contact with the health system for ongoing monitoring, treatment, and support. Managing chronic conditions usually requires coordinated, multidisciplinary care.

Many conditions share the same preventable lifestyle risk factors, such as poor diet, lack of physical activity, smoking or vaping, and alcohol use. These risks could be reduced through public health and clinical approaches, supported by public policy focused on prevention.

This focus area includes information about:

• patterns of chronic conditions in Australia including cancer, dementia, cardiovascular disease, disease burden and social determinants of health
• managing chronic conditions across the health system including spending, use of primary care and multidisciplinary support, access to care, affordability and service availability
• preventable risk factors and how they remain as a major driver of chronic conditions including tobacco and e-cigarettes and obesity
• evidence and data for chronic conditions.

Focus area 2: Supporting people across health, aged care and disability systems

Australia is experiencing demographic and health changes. This includes an ageing population, more people with disability, and a growing number of people living with chronic conditions. These trends are increasing demand for care and support services that span multiple systems. Where these systems intersect, effective coordination between people, services and data are essential to deliver high‑quality care. 

This focus area includes information about:

• integrating Australia’s care and support systems to meet growing demand
• use of emergency departments for non-life-threatening conditions which could be managed in primary care
• delayed discharge from hospital
• support for people with psychosocial disability
• transitioning younger people in residential aged care to age-appropriate care 
• impacts on unpaid carers.

Focus area 3: Factors influencing the health of First Nations people

For First Nations people, good health is more than the absence of disease or illness; it is a holistic concept that includes physical, social, emotional, cultural, spiritual and ecological wellbeing.

This focus area includes information related to First Nations people, about:

• what influences First Nations people’s health, including protective factors
• improvements in the social factors that underpin good health
• importance of culturally safe care 
• health and wellbeing outcomes that have improved and those that require further improvements 
• strengthening the evidence base. 

Focus area 4: Connecting evidence and policy at the intersection of health and welfare

People experiencing disadvantage often receive support from multiple health and welfare systems during the most difficult periods of their lives. Information about these experiences and outcomes are often held in separate, disconnected data systems, which in turn limits the understanding of which groups of people navigate multiple service systems. Linked data environments are changing this, by generating evidence about how people move across systems and supporting a more person-centred approach to service design. These insights support policy agencies to collaboratively design programs and services that are easier for people to navigate and more efficiently and effectively improve outcomes.

This focus area includes information about: 

• supporting vulnerable Australians: social determinants, compounding disadvantage and the role of data linkage
• deaths among people receiving homelessness and drug and alcohol support services using linked data
• how linked data demonstrates the need for cross-portfolio policy development.

Focus area 5: Australia’s mothers and babies: maternity care and outcomes

Each year in Australia, around 300,000 babies are born. The outcomes and experiences of mothers and babies are closely shaped by the social determinants of health. Factors such as geography, education, income, culture, social support, health behaviours and biology interact to influence the maternal and perinatal periods, with changes taking place over time. 

While Australia is one of the safest places for a baby to be born, inequities persist for some women and babies. Some poorer outcomes may reflect gaps in maternal care access.

This focus area includes information about:

• the characteristics of mothers in Australia and how their health risk profiles are changing
• how use of maternity care is changing in Australia
• intervention rates increasing over time, particularly inductions and caesarean sections
• how childbirth in Australia is generally safe, but deaths still occur for mothers and babies.

Focus area 6: From silos to systems: strengthening Australia’s health data

High quality health data are essential for policy, service management, research, and patient care. In Australia, data and statistics support decisions about funding and service planning, enable monitoring of population health and disparities and underpin assessment of whether the health system is delivering outcomes and value. 

Over time, national health data assets have expanded and evolved, improving how data are connected, standardised and used to understand health and welfare systems. This reflects growing recognition that many policy challenges span multiple sectors, necessitating a move away from fragmented data collections toward a more integrated national health data system. 

Continued efforts are needed to further strengthen data coverage, integration and accessibility to support decision making across Australia’s health and welfare systems.

This focus area includes information about:

• current data development efforts converging around 4 system‑level priorities
• the importance of expanding primary health care data for understanding system performance
• how integrating data across sectors is enabling visibility of patient pathways and outcomes
• how national coordination is essential for integrated data to be used at scale
• sustaining current data development efforts is essential to whole‑of‑system stewardship.