DrRobyn Johnson

Around 4.4 million Australians live with disability, and many experience poorer general and mental health than people without disability, often due to barriers in accessing quality healthcare. These barriers include ineffective communication and discriminatory attitudes from healthcare professionals. Although the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities affirms the right to non‑discriminatory healthcare, the recent Royal Commission found that people—particularly those with cognitive or intellectual disability—frequently experience disrespect in healthcare settings, contributing to worse outcomes. Positive healthcare experiences are known to improve treatment adherence and reduce hospitalisations, yet many healthcare professionals and graduates feel underprepared to work effectively with people with disability. Health education remains dominated by the medical model, with limited understanding of the Social Model of Disability, which emphasises empowerment and autonomy. Australia’s Disability Strategy (2021–2031) highlights the need for better capability among health service providers, including educators. In response, this education fellowship aims to build interdisciplinary collaborations to improve disability-related teaching across the Faculty. AIMS: 1. Understand current educator attitudes and knowledge about disability and identify key curriculum concepts. 2. Use co‑design to develop practical teaching exemplars that help prepare graduates to work safely and effectively with people with disabilities.

This project arose from a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Education Collaboration Speech-Language Pathology. It aims to discover how speech pathologists and speech pathology students view AI in relation to professional practice placements