2005 Healthy Development Adelaide Award

Professor Graeme Hugo was presented with the Healthy Development Adelaide Award at the inaugural HDA Oration; 'Demographic change and its implications for healthy development in South Australia’.

Professor Hugo is a Federation Fellow, Professor of the Discipline of Geographical and Environmental Studies and Director of the National Centre for Social Applications of Geographical Information Systems at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of over 200 books, articles in scholarly journals and chapters in books, as well as a large number of conference papers and reports.

South Australia’s population is sometimes depicted as static but the reality is that it is changing profoundly in its size, composition and spatial distribution. Too often population is seen as an unchanging backdrop against which political, economic and social change play out. However the population is constantly changing and the nature and pace of these changes will be an important influence on the types of demand made on the health industry in the future. There are three main ways in which demographic changes will challenge health in South Australia over the next two decades… It will influence the pattern of disease. It will affect the level and type of demand for health services. It will have an effect on the health workforce.