Australian Health & History is a searchable database of documents about the history of Australian public health.

This pilot phase, funded by Deakin University and Cancer Council Victoria, contains tens of thousands of digitised documents about the history of cancer treatment, prevention and supportive care.

Browse all collections
Example from Prevention General Collection
Example from General Correspondence with Public (1940s)
Example from the Social Service Policy Unit Correspondence (1989)

About Us

Australian Health & History is a collaborative project by Deakin University and Cancer Council Victoria.

The project was developed by A/Prof. Carolyn Holbrook (Deakin) and Dr Thomas Kehoe (Cancer Council Victoria) with support from an Australian Research Council grant: LP210100204 Cancer Culture: Understanding Anti-Cancer Campaigns in Australia.

We acknowledge the support of Profs. Vicki White, Trish Livingston, David Hill, and Andrew May.

Seed funding for the pilot was provided in October 2024 by the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Deakin University, Prof. Matthew Clarke. Deakin University’s Faculty of Arts, Centre for Contemporary Histories and Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation also provided funding.

Development of the pilot stage was managed by Dr Bradley Underhill from Deakin University. Technical and design leadership was provided by Ryan Andrianto at Cancer Council Victoria.

AH&H is a resource for advocates, policymakers, and practitioners in public health. Our aim is to bring to life and make accessible the long and complicated history of public health activity in Australia so that people in the field may learn from the past to innovate for the future.

Please direct queries to:

Meet the Project Team