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Overview & mission

The Health@Business Research Network is a collaborative network to advance the knowledge and practice of business activities that enable health, healthcare, and effective health outcomes.

The network is a group of researchers from UNSW Business focused on health-related research in new and emerging areas in building high quality, high impact research outcomes with relevance to the Business School’s research profile. The network supports UNSW Strategy 2025’s drive for academic excellence (research quality), social engagement (a just society, grand challenges, knowledge exchange for social progress and economic prosperity) and global impact (partnerships). It aims to develop and share new knowledge about the connections that foster and cultivate health, and which informs policy and practice.

UNSW Business School researchers are well-positioned to apply our expertise to challenges affecting health care such as population ageing, use of big data and policy development, artificial intelligence and other technology trends, healthy workplaces, changing consumer behaviours and patient-centred care.

The value in engaging with Health@Business is its business perspective and the breadth of the expertise and profiles of our network members. Unlike other initiatives located in Schools of Medicine, part of the uniqueness of our network is that it offers our partners a business school perspective on healthcare. As a leading global business school (#15 QS Ranking for Accounting and Finance; Top 100 MBA ranking UK Financial Times), the UNSW Business School is focused on globally engaged and high impact ideas in the business realm. This focus, alongside the breadth of our range, allows Health@Business to give a different perspective on healthcare – from people to institutions, from behaviour to policy, from superannuation and tax to intellectual property, the range of possibilities is large. This business-specific depth alongside already established collaborations and work in health provides Health@Business a unique outlook on health problems while offering our partners a range of ongoing project possibilities that they may need help with.

How we got here

• Health care is one of the largest employers in Australia. From fitness trackers to workplace wellness, hospital supply chain to costs of disease management, health is a broad area that touches on people’s everyday lives. To encourage and sustain a healthy Australian society, the Government, private and not-for-profit stakeholders rely on evidence-based research produced by experts across disciplines, including clinicians, practitioners, public health specialists and social scientists
• UNSW Strategy 2025 sets the University’s sights on leading the discussion on grand challenges facing society in Australia and worldwide, which includes health and wellbeing
• Strategic research alignment to UNSW strengths and external funding priorities in health can help drive a productive agenda that aims to impact society, policy and practice. Developing expertise around health can improve faculty performance through research outputs in high impact journals, connections with external partners and innovative courses

Mission:

A collaborative network to advance the knowledge and practice of business activities that enable health, healthcare, and effective health outcomes. The initiative is focused on expanding and understanding the health behaviours, status, and work boundaries between individuals and groups, health services and systems, and the economics of health in community and environments. It aims to develop and share new knowledge about the connections that foster and cultivate health, and which informs policy and practice.

The network is made up of three research streams that are closely aligned with Business School faculty and capabilities:

Health Behaviours, Status and Work: This stream focuses on how behaviour impacts health and health outcomes, and approaches to health, productivity, and wellbeing at work.

Health Economics: This stream focuses on understanding and enhancing economic behaviour in its many variants, and contributing to health services and health policy research.

Health Services and Systems: This stream focuses on identifying affordable healthcare and service delivery models, and building and maintaining sustainable healthcare.

The network has a multipart agenda:

1. Gain buy in for research topics from stakeholders and leverage champions to boost and strengthen capabilities in health research
2. Build connections with health professionals
3. Leverage existing translation outlets
4. Build education partnerships with healthcare industry clients
5. Collaborate with sector and industry specific disciplines