Policy Forum Maps Twelve Reforms to Close Health Gaps for Australians with Disability

Australians with disability continue to experience markedly poorer health outcomes than people without disability, and the COVID-19 pandemic widened those gaps. In response, researchers from the Centre of Research Excellence in Disability and Health (CRE-DH), a collaboration spanning five Australian universities, convened a federal-level policy forum to identify what government action should come next. A new analysis of that forum, published in BMC Health Services Research, distils the discussions into twelve recommendations aimed at dismantling the structural drivers of health inequity for people with disability.

The forum took place in September 2022 and brought together 32 senior representatives from 16 organisations, including government officials and disability advocates, across two identical half-day virtual workshops. Discussions were held under the Chatham House Rule, which the organisers used to facilitate open discussion, and the researchers note that this format was intended to encourage more open exchanges than conventional government-led consultations. Each workshop featured two small-group working sessions facilitated by CRE-DH academics, one focused on improving health outcomes within the health system itself and the other on reforms spanning disability, health and other sectors.

The research team applied a six-phase thematic analysis to the workshop material, grouping the issues raised and the resulting recommendations into strategic policy focus areas. The twelve recommendations fell across three domains: whole-of-government action, health system reform, and cross-sectoral reforms linking the disability and health systems. Participants repeatedly stressed that for people with disability, social welfare arrangements and health care are deeply intertwined, and that a lack of coordination and accountability across government departments undermines any attempt to build genuinely joined-up services.

Among the most prominent proposals were three structural interventions: developing a National Disability and Health Strategy, implementing Disability Impact Assessments, and addressing the absence of disability identifiers in administrative systems. The authors argue that the researcher-led format of the forum was itself significant. By bringing government officials and disability advocates together in a setting designed for more secure and equitable discussion, the organisers aimed to disrupt traditional consultation models in which agendas and outcomes are controlled by government.

The result, they report, was a set of actionable recommendations on issues that have persisted for years despite repeated attention. The study also examined how the forum’s recommendations align with subsequent government reports and policies. The analysis found that while recent policies address some of the recommendations, others remain unfulfilled even though they were echoed in two major national reports.

According to the authors, these unimplemented measures hold potential to strengthen disability-inclusive health policy and advance health equity for all people with disability. The findings sit within a broader evidence base showing that people with disability face poorer health outcomes across a range of measures, disparities that were exacerbated by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. That deterioration prompted the Australian government to make significant changes to health and other essential services for people with disability, and the forum was designed as a structured reflection on whether those changes went far enough and what should come next.

The study’s scope and limitations are worth noting. It reports the views of a selected group of senior stakeholders from 16 organisations participating in workshops held under confidentiality rules, so the recommendations reflect expert and advocate consensus rather than the experiences of the full population of Australians with disability. The analysis is qualitative, mapping themes and proposals rather than measuring the effect of any intervention, and the authors present the alignment with subsequent government reports as a qualitative comparison rather than an evaluation of policy impact.

Nevertheless, the authors conclude that the forum offers a practical template for advancing health equity. By pairing academic facilitation with the direct participation of senior officials and disability advocates, the CRE-DH team argues that policy forums of this kind can produce concrete, cross-sector recommendations on persistent problems, and that acting on the recommendations still awaiting implementation could deliver more equitable health outcomes for Australians with disability.

Subject of Research: Policy recommendations from a federal-level forum on improving health outcomes for Australians with disability

Article Title: Improving the health of Australians with disability: recommendations from a federal-level policy forum

Article References: Badji, S., Dickinson, H., Badland, H., Petrie, D., Llewellyn, G., & Kavanagh, A. (2026). Improving the health of Australians with disability: recommendations from a federal-level policy forum. BMC Health Services Research. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-026-15461-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12913-026-15461-7

Keywords: disability health, health equity, Australia, health policy, policy forum, National Disability and Health Strategy, Disability Impact Assessments, health system reform, CRE-DH, thematic analysis, cross-sector coordination, BMC Health Services Research