The Preventive Health Conference is an important conference on the public health calendar. Convened by the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA), the Preventive Health Conference is an annual conference aimed at providing a platform to engage, challenge and exchange ideas, where pivotal issues for building prevention in Australia are discussed and where delegates can learn from the experience, opinions and perspectives of sector leaders and their peers. Attendance is in person or watch plenary sessions online live via the ‘Plenary Hub’ portal.        

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Last year’s theme, “Prevention is Political”, highlighted the critical role of political will in shaping health outcomes. It reminded us that prevention is not just a public health issue—it’s a matter of policy, power, and priorities. This year, we build on that momentum by asking: how do we make prevention as enduring and essential as other long-term political commitments—like climate action, education, and infrastructure? “Sustaining Prevention” challenges us to embed prevention into the very fabric of our systems, ensuring it is funded, supported, and championed for decades to come.

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The 2026 Preventive Health Conference theme is: ‘Sustaining Prevention’

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Preventive health is one of the most valuable investments a community can make. Its impact is often invisible reflected not in headlines, but in the absence of disease, the preservation of productivity, and the prevention of emotional distress. Yet this invisibility makes it vulnerable to short-term thinking and underinvestment. This year’s theme and sub-themes bring renewed focus to the urgent need to design and embed enduring systems—systems that are deliberately built, politically supported, and structurally sustained to ensure prevention delivers long-term, cross-sector benefits for communities.

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Effective preventive health helps people live their best life, through all stages. It keeps people healthier for longer and reduces demand on strained healthcare systems. It also increases equity for groups of people in our community who experience poorer health. Taking a preventive approach to health challenges in our communities is fiscally sustainable, socially responsible and fair and offers benefits widely across sectors. This leads to liveable communities and thriving local economies and to the wider sustainability of government budgets. Avoiding the cost associated with complex problems such as increasing chronic disease in the community requires sustaining efforts over the longer term, working in collaboration across levels of government, sectors and with civil society. There are many successes from sustained preventive health efforts that we should celebrate such as the international leadership provided by the Ottawa Charter and the national leadership in cancer prevention from the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer at Cancer Council Victoria, both celebrating 40 years of action in 2026. Our preventive health efforts need to urgently focus on sustainability, protecting ecosystems and creating healthy environments to support healthier populations and healthier communities that are able to adapt to the impact of climate change and meet the unique challenges ahead of us over the 21st century.

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Politics continues to shape the trajectory of prevention—not only through funding and policy decisions, but through the deeper structures that determine which initiatives endure and which fade. The absence of sustained systems leaves communities exposed to avoidable harm and prevention organisations caught up in grant application and funding cycles, while well-designed, long-term prevention efforts quietly save lives and resources. To secure prevention’s future, we must build the case for its permanence—recognising it as essential infrastructure and ensuring it is protected from the volatility of political cycles and competing interests. This means challenging the power of unhealthy industries, exposing the ways they shift harm onto others, and reinforcing the systems and supports that enable prevention to flourish.

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We warmly encourage you to lock the date in your diary to join us for the Australian Public Health Conference 2026.

Conference Objectives​

• Create an environment that promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing and supports the development of a skilled and connected public health ecosystem to sustain prevention efforts into the future.

• Create opportunities to discuss issues of diversity, disability, and accessibility, and provide opportunities for all delegates to participate.

• Provide guidance and insight into ways of capacity building and strengthening of prevention systems; and

• Provide conference delegates with new and innovative ideas that can be applied to local settings to help create and improve preventive health for local communities.

Delegate Profile

Our target audience is stakeholders able to effect and/or influence change at the systems and/or practice level including:

• Researchers and Academics

• General practice sector

• Health care professionals engaged in prevention (doctors, nurses, allied health, dentists, pharmacists

• Commonwealth and state policy staff including Ministers/ministerial staff, and health and social sector department representatives

• Local government

• NGO/community and social sector provider and advocacy organisations

• School Health Promotion workers

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Program content and structure

The program will run over three days with plenary and concurrent sessions including long oral presentations, rapid fire presentations, and conversation starter presentations, workshops, and keynote plenary presentations.