PHAA declares racism in Australia as a public health emergency

8 May 2026

The following statement was approved by delegates during the closing plenary of the Preventive Health Conference at Nipaluna / Hobart, 7 May 2026.

We acknowledge Prof Ray Lovett’s presentation at the Public Health Association’s Preventive Health Conference in Nipaluna/Hobart demonstrating illness prevention in Australia cannot be sustained without confronting racism as a fundamental driver of health inequity for Indigenous peoples.

He presented clear evidence of increasing exposure to racism causing poorer health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Racism shapes access to education, housing, employment, and financial security. It constrains access to safe, responsive services and drives patterns of health risk behaviour which are logical responses to chronic exposure to discrimination and exclusion. These are not an individual’s failures.

Sustaining prevention, our conference’s theme, requires us to call out system level failures, and amplify communities’ collective power so they thrive.

Declaring racism as a national public health emergency is an important step towards achieving that.

(Moved by Prof Sarah Durkin, seconded by Dr Scott McKeown).