The ARA’s 2025 Annual Achievement Report highlights a year of ambitious projects, expanding influence and urgent workforce realities.
The Australian Rheumatology Association has released its 2025 Annual Achievement Report, a comprehensive review of its activities, milestones and strategic progress in advancing rheumatology care, research and professional engagement.
The 103-page report documented the breadth of work undertaken by the association to support rheumatologists and the broader musculoskeletal health community in Australia.
ARA president Dr Sam Whittle told Rheumatology Republic it was hard to choose a highlight from the report.
“I think the beauty of the report is the way that it shows all the things that we do as a group, which when you gather them all together at the end of the year and we put this together, it’s always surprising and gratifying to see how much work we do together as an association,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of really big projects that have been done, the workforce survey and the clinical care standards and the quality indicators and so on.
“It’s also all the work that’s done by the state groups, the committees, the special interest groups.
“Collecting it all together into one place shows us just how much we do as an association. We’re a small association, but I think we do punch above our weight.”
Central to the report was a detailed account of ARA’s advocacy and policy engagement, reflecting sustained efforts to influence national and state health agendas in favour of improved access to rheumatology services and clinical standards of care.
Over the year, the ARA strengthened its dialogues with federal and state health policymakers, reinforcing the importance of rheumatology in public health planning and resource allocation, and advancing initiatives aimed at elevating standards of care for patients with inflammatory and musculoskeletal conditions.
A highlight of the 2025 calendar, and a key feature of the report, was the successful ARA 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting held in Adelaide from 3–6 May. The meeting brought together clinicians, researchers and allied health professionals from across Australia and the region to share cutting-edge research findings, clinical updates and innovations in patient care.
More than 800 delegates came from around Australia and other parts of the world, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Feedback from delegates underscored the importance of the meeting as a forum for professional exchange and collaboration, and abstracts from the meeting have been published in specialist outlets, further amplifying the reach of the conference’s scientific contributions.
The report also profiled the ARA’s contributions to research excellence, including updates on awards, grants and strategic priorities. This encompassed recognition of members across early, mid-career and senior researcher categories, celebrating outstanding contributions to rheumatology research and highlighting the association’s commitment to nurturing research talent.
Through the ARA Research Fund and aligned partnerships, rheumatology research in Australia continues to expand, driven by initiatives that support innovation and collaboration across clinical and academic sectors.
In addition to research and professional development, the report reflected ARA’s ongoing work to embed clinical care standards in practice, including engagement with consumer voices to ensure patient-centred care models and to inform guideline development.
Dr Whittle said a major achievement for the ARA during 2025 had been the continued development of ARA resources.
In addition to the RA Clinical Care Standard, and the JIA Standards of Care, there were many new and updated clinical resources produced by the Clinical Resources Committee and Special Interest Groups, and the continued production and updating of recommendations in the Australian Living Guidelines.
Work has also begun on quality indicators for the RA CCS and clinical care standards for giant cell arteritis (GCA).
“Doing the first the clinical care standard for RA was a big step. We had already done it for JIA and then they’ve updated it,” he told RR.
“So, both of those were big projects, but it provides a template for us to continue to do this work, because it’s important and it shows that we can do it and that we can do it well, and that it has an impact.
“That’s why spreading it out to other areas like GCA is important, but also to get the quality indicators work done for the RA standards is an important next step in that, because it actually allows us to implement those standards properly.
“It also then allows our members to use the clinical care standard for themselves as well in practice, whether that’s to audit their own practice or to provide a business case to funders or as part of their own quality improvement projects and continuing professional development.”
The association’s commitment to workforce capacity and capability was also emphasised, underscoring efforts to support training, mentorship and practice improvement across diverse clinical settings.
In 2025, the ARA undertook a workforce survey, with results due out in the first quarter of this year.
As part of the survey, it produced the 2025 Workforce Report that “painted a picture of a specialist workforce not growing at a sufficient rate to meet national needs”.
“Set against a backdrop of increasing patient demand, the report finds Australia’s specialist workforce is insufficient, inequitably distributed, and lagging behind international standards,” the report read.
For the first time, the survey was extended to include health professionals and advanced trainees, providing the most comprehensive snapshot to date.
The findings are expected to confirm that without decisive policy intervention, millions of Australians will face ongoing pain, disability and an inability to participate fully in the workforce.
The ARA has already called for the development of a national rheumatology workforce strategy, as well as increased training positions, the unlocking of private-sector training and the funding of new models of care.
“It is a concern [the workforce shortage and maldistribution] and it’s something we see every day in the clinic – we see that waiting lists are enormous,” said Dr Whittle.
“Everyone’s having to continually redouble their efforts just to keep their heads above water.
“We know that our geographic distribution is terribly skewed, and you know, there’ll be a lot of detail about that when we publish our workforce report.”
Read the full report here.
