Croakey has been made aware of readers’ interest in finding out which organisations were funded under the Federal Government’s Health Peak and Advisory Bodies Program for the period 2026-30, noting that more than 120 applicants were unsuccessful.
Charles Maskell-Knight went in search of the details, and reports below.
Charles Maskell-Knight writes:
In late March, The Zap reported that the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DHDA) had completed its assessment of applications under the Health Peak and Advisory Bodies Program for the period 2026-30, and that only 12 out of 138 applicants had been successful.
However, DHDA declined to divulge the successful applicants at that time, saying “successful organisations will be listed on GrantConnect over the coming weeks, once grant agreements are executed”.
“Coming weeks” evidently meant nine weeks, because the successful applicants were eventually listed on GrantConnect on 25 May.
They are:
Currently funded organisations to miss out are:
- Australasian Institute of Digital Health
- Australasian Sleep Association
- Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM)
- Australian Association for Adolescent Health
- Australian Men’s Health Forum
- Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth
- Australian Women’s Health Alliance
- Deafness Forum Australia
- Health Justice Australia
- Lung Foundation Australia
- Obesity Australia
- Vision2020.
What to make of all this?
As Croakey colleague Jason Staines has already reported, the Climate and Health Alliance was unsuccessful in its application for funding.
Climate change may be presenting an existential threat to society with far reaching implications for our health and health system, but the Government doesn’t feel the need to fund a peak body to advise on the subject.
While there are no First Nations groups, they are funded through other mechanisms.
The DHDA webpage for the program says “the current grant opportunity for the program emphasises support for the National Preventive Health Strategy 2021–2030”.
If this is so, the omission of Obesity Australia is striking, given the significance of obesity as a public health problem and the opportunities to adopt preventive measures to address the issue.
Given this context, it is also difficult see why the Rural Doctors Association of Australia was funded for the first time, as it does not have a particular focus on prevention.
While funding for the Australian Women’s Health Alliance was not extended, the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health was funded for the first time.
Other cohort-specific groups were de-funded and not replaced with a similar group: the Australian Association for Adolescent Health, the Australian Men’s Health Forum, and the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth.
Sector reaction
Croakey approached the de-funded organisations with a request for comment.
Several were not prepared to go on the record, as they were still preparing messaging for staff and partners in the sector, and others could not meet our deadline.
Obesity Australia Director Hon Professor Timothy Gill told Croakey the grant had funded the work of the Obesity Collective, together with the Weight Issues Network (a national obesity lived-experience organisation) and the Obesity Evidence Hub (which brought together all the latest evidence around obesity management, prevention, and weight stigma).
Gill said the organisations “operate with a very small base of paid staff and rely on volunteer input and will struggle to survive without the HPAB funding”, although DHDA is providing an additional 12 months of support under the current grant.
He said the grant was also important in allowing the organisations “to avoid the need to seek or accept funding from commercial, vested interest or partisan sources and thus to be able to provide truly impartial policy and program advice to government”.
“Without this type of support we will need to engage with willing commercial interests for financial support, thus exposing us to substantial potential conflicts of interest,” he said.
In relation to the bodies which were funded, Gill said they “appear to be the larger and more established health NGOs and NFPs who have the existing infrastructure to undertake programs of work on education and promotion directly on behalf of the Department rather than a focus on providing the best impartial advice”.
He suggested “a little more balance in allocating funding between [major cross-sectoral bodies and those focusing on a more specific health priority] may have been more useful”.
Interim CEO and Vice-president of the Australian Men’s Health Forum Filipe Gama e Silva told Croakey “we are deeply disappointed not to have been successful”.
“We also want to be transparent and acknowledge that the Department has extended AMHF’s existing funding for one year to allow for a transition.”
He said “men and boys remain a distinct priority population across national health, prevention, suicide prevention and wellbeing policy”.
“They continue to experience poorer outcomes across life expectancy, suicide, chronic disease, injury, preventable mortality and engagement with health services. These are not marginal issues. They are national health issues.”
Gama e Silva said the Forum was seeking replacement philanthropic funding but, if this was not secured, it would need to reduce activity, including national policy work, sector coordination, stakeholder engagement, and the platforms supporting Men’s Health Week and International Men’s Day, and this would inevitably place pressure on staffing.
Lung Foundation CEO Mark Brooke told Croakey while the Foundation “was unsuccessful in securing funding… the Department has extended our current funding to continue to support lung health policy associated with the National Preventive Health Strategy”.
“We are grateful for this extension to enable us to continue to provide advice to government on a range of important lung health issues, including tobacco and vaping, vaccination, and more,” he said.
Priorities
Gama e Silva told Croakey “Australia should be able to hold more than one priority at the same time”.
“We can support women, multicultural communities, LGBTIQ+ communities, rural communities, consumers, public health and suicide prevention, while also maintaining a coherent national mechanism for the health and wellbeing of men and boys.”
DHDA appears able to pay consultants for reviews that could be done in-house, and then pay more consultants to review the work of other consultants.
But it can’t afford to fund a wide range of peak bodies to draw together and provide to Government advice from a particular health sector – advice which might obviate the need to pay consultants to carry out the reviews in the first place.
Author details
Charles Maskell-Knight PSM was a senior public servant in the Commonwealth Department of Health for over 25 years before retiring in 2021. He worked as a senior adviser to the Aged Care Royal Commission in 2019-20. He is a member of Croakey Health Media; he provides a weekly column, The Zap, as a probono service to our readers. Follow on X/Twitter at @CharlesAndrewMK, and on Bluesky at: @charlesmk.bsky.social.
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