The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Department of Health and Aged Care, responsible for implementation of the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), have released this joint as a commitment to: 

• health equity, acknowledging that every person in Australia has the right to be included in safe, high quality research that informs our health care 
• supporting everyone in the community to have a role in research, acknowledging that better partnerships between consumers, researchers, clinicians, and other research stakeholders ultimately leads to better health outcomes 
• strongly encouraging all research funded through the NHMRC and MRFF to: 

1. consider sex, gender, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation at all stages of every research project 
2. use consistent definitions and classifications (the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2020 Standard).

The purpose of the this statement is to improve health outcomes by improving knowledge of research gaps related to historical underrepresentation of sex, gender, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation in various research fields and topics.