Australia is a huge country. While 70 per cent of the population live in cities, 30 per cent lives in rural and regional areas.

That 30 percent have markedly poorer health outcomes. There are many reasons for this, but to date there has been insufficient investment in research to find solutions to improve the health of a third of Australia’s population​.

Currently the National Health and Medical Research Council only allocates 2.4 per cent of its funds towards research that specifically aims to deliver health benefits to people who live in rural or remote Australia.​

The development of translational research centres across Australia has brought a new opportunity to create an alliance of rural medical researchers who are closely partnered with health services including hospitals, community and primary care​.

This symposium marks the beginning of a program of work to build a strong national alliance that will be able to improve medical research outcomes and impact for rural Australia.