I am delighted to present Advancing Health 2030, the new strategic plan for the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. The University of Melbourne’s Advancing Melbourne 2030 strategy sets out our purpose of benefiting society through the transformative impact of education and research. Our aspirations to be a world-leading and globally connected University are grounded in our key themes of Place, Community, Education, Discovery and Global.
Over the last six months, we’ve been thinking deeply about how the faculty can contribute to achieving the goals of Advancing Melbourne. We are located at the heart of one of the world’s premier biomedical precincts and we have a 150-year history of delivering outstanding educational experiences to our students. Today, we bring together the largest aggregation of health and medical researchers in Australia to undertake research that makes a global impact.
Since the previous strategic plan, Beyond 2018, the faculty has experienced unprecedented growth and success across our research, teaching and learning programs. The COVID-19 pandemic brought health and medical research into the public spotlight. As the community came to understand the importance of discovery science and public health, the research world worked at a lightning pace to keep the public safe.
The faculty now stands at a pivotal moment. If we are to continue to make a real difference to the health and wellbeing of our communities, we must be ready to meet the challenges of a changing world. To make an impact and improve lives, we will continue our extraordinary efforts in all facets of health and medical research and education. We must also embrace the realities of climate change and its accompanying chronic health impacts, the gaps in our health system thrown into sharp relief by COVID-19, the importance of mental health and wellbeing to social cohesion and the fast-paced digital transformation of healthcare and education.
These big issues won’t be solved by short-term, siloed approaches – they demand long-term, multi-disciplinary approaches. By shifting our strategic vision to focus on the value of working in collaboration, the importance of building a culture of innovation and the necessity of nurturing our people and their ideas, we will set ourselves up to find solutions to the complex health problems of our times.
To meet the challenges of a changing world will require our steadfast commitment to strengthening an inclusive, diverse and equitable culture, grounded in respect for Indigenous knowledge and the traditional owners of the lands on which we work and study.
Thanks to the many students, staff and partners who gave of their time to tell us what kind of faculty they want to see in 2030. By listening to a cross-section of voices, this strategic plan captures the ambition of our large and diverse faculty to look beyond what we are good at, to what we are good for.
This strategy sets out a unifying vision and articulates the role that our faculty can play, as we work with our partners, to ensure that Melbourne is a globally leading health innovation centre known for the impact we make on the health and wellbeing of the world.
Professor Jane Gunn, FAHMS, FRACGP, PhD, MBBS
Dean, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences
The University of Melbourne
April 2022
Explore Advancing Health 2030
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Impact
Read stories about how we are making an impact through collaboration, innovation and nurturing people and their ideas.
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Place
Strengthen our world-leading health and biomedical ecosystem to achieve greater levels of integration with our partners and attract the best students, staff and partners to drive global impact.
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Community
Champion diversity, inclusivity, innovation and excellence in a supportive environment where careers flourish and our people drive our success.
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Education
Pioneer new models of learning and teaching that prepare our students and graduates to drive transformative outcomes in health, research and their communities.
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Discovery
Grow the efficacy and influence of our research through interdisciplinary and integrated research with our partners and industry.
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Global
Address the most important health and research priorities and engage in strategic global partnerships and public discourse to improve health outcomes.
Strategic Initiatives
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Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery
The Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery is a collaborative, hospital-based biomedical engineering research centre that will enable our researchers to help develop innovative devices – which have the potential to transform lives and position Australia as a global leader in biomedical engineering.
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Australian Institute for Infectious Diseases
Bringing together leading researchers, public health experts and clinicians from the University of Melbourne, the Doherty Institute and the Burnet Institute, the Australian Institute of Infectious Diseases will drive innovative research to help us tackle current and future pandemics.
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Collaborative Practice Centre
The Collaborative Practice Centre will prepare our students for work in multidisciplinary teams to provide comprehensive patient care and enable us to provide guidance to our partners to improve healthcare training, practice and policy.
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Student Experience and Belonging
We will foster a greater sense of belonging and wellbeing in our students by meaningfully collaborating with student-led councils, tailoring and expanding our mentorship programs for postgraduate cohorts, and rolling out initiatives to drive greater student diversity.
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Inclusive Staff Community
We strive to be the most diverse health faculty in the country. We will continue to support grant and fellowship programs, staff networks and other initiatives designed to embed a values-driven, respectful and inclusive culture that is welcoming to all staff.
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Melbourne Academy of Surgical Anatomy
The Melbourne Academy of Surgical Anatomy (MASA) will improve the surgical competency of our graduates through expanded courses and training programs, and help drive innovative research with our industry and engineering partners to develop new surgical tools and digital technologies.
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Faculty Research Innovation Fund
We will establish a new fund to encourage bold thinking and courageous innovation, with commercialisation returns to be reinvested into initiatives to help us build a culture of innovation.
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Graduate Research Revitalisation
We will work to improve the experiences of graduate researchers through implementing professional development for supervisors, a new mechanism to support graduate research development and fairer criteria for the awarding of scholarships.
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Indigenous Health
We will strengthen the place of Indigenous knowledge in the faculty through supporting initiatives that will boost Indigenous recruitment, increase high-impact Indigenous research, and enable global Indigenous health partnerships to address health inequities.
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Digital Care and Navigation Centre
A new Learning Health System Innovation Hub will lead the digital transformation of health through bringing together researchers, clinicians and patient representatives to co-design and validate innovative data-driven and digital-health-enabled models of care.
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Climate Change and Health
A new Climate and Health Innovation Hub will accelerate action to prevent and respond to the global health impacts of a changing natural environment through testing innovative ideas and implementing evidence-based solutions in real-world settings.