Our Chief Executive Officer, Dr Anthony Brown, highlights stories of advocacy and change we achieved in the financial year 2024//25. He describes the power of our partnerships – with communities and consumers, research collaborators, decision-makers and health service staff – in achieving progress towards our vision: High-quality health systems, policies, services, and research in NSW, driven by strong consumer voices.
More than 20 NSW Health staff completed the newly launched, free health consumer engagement training course for health professionals in July 2024.
We advertised over 120 health consumer engagement and participation opportunities in the FY 24/25
We ran 7 educational webinars for our members and the wider health consumer engagement community in FY 24/25
13 presentations at conferences, webinars and events
Published 22 newsletters and HCNSW alerts
We had more than 10 requests for media appearances from State and National media outlets such as the ABC, The Guardian Australia, Health Services Daily and BBC Australia, leading to HCNSW and consumer advocates in the media spreading the patient voice.
Growth in socials year on year: 1 July 2024 – 30 June 2025
Our total audiences added together across all our social media channels.
Our total impressions added together across all our social media channels.
Our total engagement added together across all our social media channels.
Our online engagement and community platform
The sum of actions members, moderators, and hosts take within our network, such as reactions, comments, posts, shares, messages, etc.
Made a contribution, such as creating a post, messaging, commenting, answering a question, RSVPing to an event, voting on a poll, reacting to a post, or sharing.
A member that visits our platform at least once during a selected date period.
All members on our Mighty Networks platform.
In July 2024, As part of Consumer Voices in Clinical Trials in NSW (ConViCTioN), the partnership released clinical trials resources for consumers.
In recognition of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Sydney and HCNSW, we co-hosted an event to celebrate World Patient Safety Day on 17 September 2024.
We collaborated with 8 other organisations to celebrate International Day of Older Persons on 1 October 2024, focusing on “Ageing with Dignity.” The event featured panel discussions and an expo highlighting care and support systems for older adults.
HCNSW participated in multiple NSW Single Digital Patient Record (SDPR) activities. We ran a webinar with Dr Teresa Anderson AM in November 2024, a follow-up consultation webinar in December 2024, and published a report in March 2025, capturing consumer and patient organisation feedback on the SDPR. Download it here.
Since January 2025, the HCNSW Reconciliation Action Plan Working Group has worked on our inaugural Reflect Reconciliation Action Plan, receiving conditional approval from Reconciliation Australia in June 2025.
In February 2025, HCNSW joined the Coalition for Preventive Health Funding, expanding our advocacy reach into preventative healthcare policy.
Read Launch of Coalition for Preventative Health Funding (CHF).
HCNSW presented “Your Healthcare Journey: Simple Tips for Navigating the System” in March 2025, providing practical guidance for consumers navigating healthcare services.
Our consumer taskforces-driven issues are successfully translating into concrete advocacy outcomes and educational programming. The issue of AI in Healthcare has been raised by taskforces, prompting HCNSW to commit to delivering a series of webinars on the topic in July 2025, following taskforce discussion earlier in April, May and June 2025.
The Association for the Wellbeing of Children in Healthcare (AWCH) and HCNSW jointly launched ‘Collaborate & Connect’ during Reconciliation Week in June 2025 – A toolbox for non-indigenous organisations to better engage with First Nations young people.
In late 2024, we asked health service users and consumer organisations what they think about the Single Digital Patient Record (SDPR) — a new NSW Health system designed to bring medical records together in one secure place.
Our Consumer Engagement Tara Lee, our Consumer Engagement Manager, highlights what we heard and why genuine consumer involvement is essential as the SDPR is rolled out.
In this video, Julia Brockhausen, Chair of the HCNSW RAP Working Group, shares what the RAP means for us: our commitment to building meaningful relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, embedding cultural respect in all we do, and taking real steps toward trust, equity, and allyship.
Watch the video and explore the Reconciliation Action Plan on our website, featuring the artwork Nurturing Voices by Wiradjuri artist Shelby Lyons.
In 2024/25, we travelled state-wide.
There are groups of people advocating for people like me, and it’s a great feeling to be part of that. I feel privileged to be able to do that.
I’ve realised how important it is to keep fighting for systemic changes, even when progress feels slow.
Be passionate. Believe you can make a difference. Express your anger diplomatically. Find a mentor and build a support network.
Meeting consumers involved in research and hearing firsthand about the importance of consumer involvement, and how to do this in a sensitive and empowering way, was enlightening. Increasingly, MRFF and NHMRC grants require demonstration of meaningful consumer involvement, and I immediately took the learnings from the workshop to engage consumers and put together a successful MRFF application.
Research is so much better with consumers involved. Its relevance is improved.
Bringing a team together for research is always stronger than an individual, but consumers see things from a very special vantage point.
Working with Health Consumers NSW helped build capacity for our research team and generated valuable insights guiding our research on cardiometabolic medicines. They helped connect us with health consumer representatives we wouldn’t have otherwise reached, and their facilitation ensured that our workshop was consumer-focused and productive.
Our membership has grown 13 per cent overall, compared to last financial year. The main growth has been in individual membership, including the major milestone of surpassing 1,000 individual members this year.
A copy of our audited financial statements is available on request, email info@hcnsw.org.au.
