Children in rural Australia are missing out on critical early health supports, with limited access to allied health services putting them at greater risk of lifelong developmental challenges. Now, new research from the University of South Australia shows that local communities hold the key to improving health outcomes for Aussie bush kids.

In a new publication in PLOS Digital Health, experts in bioethics and law call for immediate standardization of methods for collection of race and ethnicity data, and for developers to warranty race and ethnicity data quality in medical AI systems. The research synthesizes concerns about why patient race data in EHRs may not be accurate, identifies best practices for healthcare systems and medical AI researchers to improve data accuracy, and provides a new template for medical AI developers to transparently warrant the quality of their race and ethnicity data

Washington, D.C., June 2025: In a defining moment for global public health and the fight against chronic disease, more than 350 leading scientists, policy makers, ethicists, journalists and civil society representatives from over 50 countries and 150 major organizations gathered at the inaugural Human Exposome Moonshot Forum. What is expected by participants to be seen, in-time, as a historic event, this Washington, D.C. gathering marks the formal launch of a bold and globally coordinated, bottom-up initiative to map the physical, chemical, biological and psychosocial exposures that people experience during their lifetime. Known as the "exposome" experts agree that these influences account for over 80% of chronic disease today. As Professor Thomas Hartung of Johns Hopkins University, Member of the Organizing Committee and the Forum’s Host stated: “We are not promising a rocket launch to a ready destination. We are building the launchpad. The exposome is not the rocket, it is the moon. Each new data point, each discovery, is a step towards that distant but vital world where prevention replaces reaction and science empowers health.”

In addition to the scarcity and unequal distribution of water, quality is being strongly affected by agricultural pesticides, industrial waste, and the disposal of medicines and hygiene products.