Commission on Excellence and Innovation in Health

Student Pathways in Health: Building Capability and Shaping Future Care

28 Nov 2025

In 2025, the CEIH launched the Stu­dent Path­ways Pro­gram — a coor­di­nat­ed approach to stu­dent engage­ment designed to devel­op future-ready health pro­fes­sion­als. The pro­gram con­nects stu­dents at var­i­ous lev­els includ­ing hon­ours, master’s and PhD stu­dents, with real-world health inno­va­tion projects. 

The Stu­dent Path­ways Pro­gram, sup­ports the CEIH’s mis­sion of shap­ing future health sys­tem capac­i­ty by:

  • build­ing stu­dent capability
  • fos­ter­ing con­nec­tion and collaboration
  • sup­port­ing real-world learning
  • con­tribut­ing to the CEIH’s strate­gic priorities
  • cre­at­ing a pipeline for ongo­ing impact. 

Already this year, we have worked with 5 stu­dents from across South Aus­tralia. Most recent­ly, Mas­ter of Pub­lic Health stu­dent Jah­navee, col­lab­o­rat­ed with our Part­ner­ships and South Aus­tralian Com­pre­hen­sive Can­cer Net­work (SAC­CaN) teams to map how can­cer patients and car­ers are engaged in con­sumer advo­ca­cy across South Australia’s can­cer ser­vices. Her analy­sis is now inform­ing SACCaN’s future approach to can­cer con­sumer engage­ment, help­ing embed con­sumer per­spec­tives in can­cer care planning.

Mean­while, Dil­hari, a PhD intern who joined the CEIH in August, is con­duct­ing a scop­ing review of cross-sec­tor care mod­els for peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness who fre­quent­ly use emer­gency depart­ments. Her work explores effec­tive approach­es to inte­grat­ed, coor­di­nat­ed care and iden­ti­fies promis­ing mod­els across health and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices. This could help inform future advo­ca­cy for bet­ter sup­port for this vul­ner­a­ble group.

Look­ing ahead to 2026, the CEIH will host mul­ti­ple cohorts of final-year med­ical stu­dents for equi­ty-focussed place­ments, and an Hon­ours research project explor­ing for­mal health­care part­ner­ships and inte­grat­ed care.

If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about these excit­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions and oppor­tu­ni­ties, please get in touch.
Read more about work­ing with stu­dents here.