2025 Future Healthy Countdown
Learning and employment pathways for healthy children and young people
Future Healthy Countdown 2030: Measuring what matters for good health and wellbeing for all of Australia’s children and young people
How does the Countdown work?
Each year until 2030, the Countdown brings the best available evidence and policy priorities together in one place in an annual supplement to the Medical Journal of Australia.
Each supplement dives deep into one of the seven domains of the Countdown, spotlighting the best evidence for improving outcomes across this area while also tracking annual progress against key measures and targets for each domain of the Countdown.
Crucially, the Countdown includes the voices of young people to ensure they play a part in shaping their future.
The Countdown is supported by a set of eight policy actions based on evidence of what works from young people, academics, and policy experts.
Each policy action is feasible, immediately implementable, and provides a blueprint for government action to achieve measurable improvements in the health and wellbeing of children and young people by 2030.
The research so far
The 2025 supplement
Future Healthy Countdown 2030: learning and employment pathways for healthy children and young people
The 2025 publication reveals worsening health, learning, and wellbeing outcomes for Australia’s children and young people. It highlights that health and education are inseparable foundations for equity—and calls for urgent, coordinated action to create a fairer, healthier future for all children.
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The 2024 supplement
Participating for the health and wellbeing of Australia’s children and young people.
The 2024 publication focuses on the importance of ‘participating’ for health and wellbeing. A core policy action in this domain is lowering the voting age to 16 to empower young people and strengthen Australia’s political system to tackle inequalities.
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The 2023 supplement
Measuring what matters for good health and wellbeing for all of Australia’s children and young people.
This inaugural publication provides a framework to guide policy action and investment in what matters for children and young people.
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Future Healthy Countdown is a collaboration between ARACY, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and VicHealth.
Click here to find out more about our partners