New Insights on Disability and Health Equity
Date
From: Friday February 27, 2026, 3:30 pm
To: Friday February 27, 2026, 5:00 pm
Hosted by Monash Business School’s Centre for Health Economics and organised as part of AHEAD – Achieving Health Equity for All People with Disability, an NHMRC-funded Centre of Research Excellence. This event will explore how high-quality, interdisciplinary evidence can inform more equitable health, education, and social policies for people with disabilities.
Bringing together international and Australian perspectives, the session will examine how disability shapes life outcomes, and impacts families, education, work, wellbeing, and participation in society.
This event will be held in-person and online via Zoom. Please select your preferred attendance ticket when registering. Light snacks will be provided after the in-person event.
The program will feature international speakers alongside researchers from the AHEAD Centre of Research Excellence, who will share emerging insights from Australian disability research. These contributions will highlight current evidence gaps, methodological challenges, and practical considerations in generating and using evidence to inform policy and service design.
Drawing on experiences across different systems and contexts, the event will consider how economic, public health, and social science evidence can be better translated into decision-making to support more inclusive and effective policies. The session will conclude with discussion and audience engagement on priorities for future disability research and evidence-informed policy.
Speakers
Dr Johan Jarl, Senior Lecturer, Lund University, Sweden
Dr Jarl is a health economist with extensive experience in economic evaluations, cost analysis, and register-based studies on consequences of disease and treatment. He has a particular interest in the impact of early onset disabilities on individual and family outcomes, in areas such as labour market productivity and family formation, and how health and social intervention can improve health, societal participation, and quality of life. His work focuses on the health economic aspects of disabilities, with a particular interest in cost-effectiveness analysis and broad societal consequences.
A/Prof Ann Alriksson-Schmidt, Disability and Public Health, Lund University, Sweden
A/Prof Alriksson-Schmidt has worked at universities and federal agencies (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in the United States and Sweden. Most of her work relates to congenital disabilities or childhood-onset disabilities, such as cerebral palsy and spina bifida. She is currently principal investigator of a six-year research program entitled MOVING-ON WITH CP. She is a developmental psychologist by training but also holds an MSPH in public health (focus epidemiology). A/Prof Alriksson-Schmidt also serves as vice chairperson of CP Sweden, which she co-founded in 2020.
Prof Helen Dickinson, Public Service Research Group, University of New South Wales, Canberra
Prof Dickinson’s expertise is in policy implementation and evaluation, with a particular interest in disability policies and programmes. She has published 20 books and over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics and is also a frequent commentator within mainstream media.
In 2015, Prof Dickinson was made a Victorian Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia, and in 2019 made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2021, she was named one of Apolitical’s 100 most influential academics in government. She has worked with a range of different levels of government, community organisations and private organisations in Australia, the UK, New Zealand and Europe on research and consultancy programmes.
Lu Ye, Research Assistant, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
Lu Ye is a graduate researcher. Her research explores how social factors contribute to mental health inequalities for people with disability. She has a strong interest in applying advanced epidemiological and statistical methods to the analysis of longitudinal surveys.
For more information and to register, please visit the event webpage here.
Website
https://www.monash.edu/business/events/new-insights-on-disability-and-health-equityVenue
Sky Room
Level 14, 30 Collins Street, , Melbourne VIC 3000
