The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and SDG 3 for VCE Health and Human Development Unit 4 AoS 2
“The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, with a focus on SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing, and how the goals are interconnected and promote health and human development globally”
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 goals with 169 targets, adopted by all 193 United Nations member states in September 2015 as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Their rationale is that poverty, ill health, inequality and environmental damage are connected and must be tackled together, in every country, so that no one is left behind. SDG 3 aims to "ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages", with targets on maternal and child deaths, communicable and non-communicable disease, substance use, road deaths, sexual and reproductive health, universal health coverage and pollution. With four years to go, the UN's 2026 report finds only 36 per cent of targets on track or making moderate progress, and maternal mortality nearly three times the SDG 3 target.
Jump to a section
- What this dot point is asking
- What the SDGs are
- Rationale: why the SDGs were needed
- Objectives: what the SDGs set out to do
- Key features of SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
- Progress on SDG 3: where the world stands
- How the SDGs promote health and human development
- How this dot point appears in the VCE exam
- Exam-style questions
What this dot point is asking
This dot point asks you to explain the rationale and objectives of the SDGs, describe the key features of SDG 3, and show how the goals work together to promote health and human development. VCAA questions have asked how an Australian aid priority advances SDG 5 (2022) and how preventing violence against women and girls promotes health and wellbeing (2025). The links between SDG 3 and SDGs 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 12 are covered in depth on SDG interconnections.
What the SDGs are
The SDGs were adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015 and run from 2016 to 2030. They replaced the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which ran from 2000 to 2015.
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The SDGs balance three dimensions:
- Social: meeting people's needs for health, education, equality and decent living conditions.
- Economic: decent work and inclusive growth without exhausting resources or worsening inequality.
- Environmental: protecting the climate, water, land and ocean so they continue to support life.
The 2030 Agenda also groups the goals under five themes, often called the 5 Ps: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership.
Rationale: why the SDGs were needed
- Unfinished business from the MDGs. The MDGs cut extreme poverty and child deaths, but many targets were missed, progress was uneven, and the poorest groups were often left behind.
- The MDGs were too narrow. They applied mainly to low- and middle-income countries, largely ignored inequality, the environment, peace and governance, and treated issues separately.
- Problems are interconnected. Poverty, hunger, poor education, gender inequality, unsafe water and climate change all drive ill health, and ill health in turn keeps people in poverty. Lasting progress needs action on all of them at once.
- Sustainability. Development that damages the environment undermines future health and wellbeing.
Objectives: what the SDGs set out to do
- End poverty and hunger in all their forms.
- Ensure healthy lives, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation and decent work for all.
- Reduce inequality within and between countries.
- Protect the planet through sustainable consumption and production and action on climate change.
- Foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies and strong global partnerships.
Four features distinguish the SDGs from the MDGs:
| Feature | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Universal | Every country has commitments, including high-income countries such as Australia |
| Integrated | The goals are indivisible; progress on one depends on others |
| Leave no one behind | Reach the furthest behind first; data are broken down by income, sex, age, disability, location and other characteristics |
| Broader | 17 goals and 169 targets, compared with 8 goals and 21 targets for the MDGs |
Key features of SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
SDG 3 aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. It has 13 targets: nine outcome targets (3.1 to 3.9) and four means-of-implementation targets (3.a to 3.d).
| Target | What it commits to |
|---|---|
| 3.1 | Reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030 |
| 3.2 | End preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 by 2030; neonatal mortality at least as low as 12 and under-5 mortality at least as low as 25 per 1,000 live births |
| 3.3 | End the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases, and combat hepatitis, water-borne and other communicable diseases, by 2030 |
| 3.4 | Reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by one third by 2030, and promote mental health and well-being |
| 3.5 | Strengthen prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drugs and harmful use of alcohol |
| 3.6 | Halve global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents (originally by 2020) |
| 3.7 | Universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including family planning, information and education, by 2030 |
| 3.8 | Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, quality essential services and affordable essential medicines and vaccines |
| 3.9 | Substantially reduce deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution by 2030 |
| 3.a | Strengthen implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control |
| 3.b | Support research and development of vaccines and medicines, and access to affordable essential medicines and vaccines |
| 3.c | Substantially increase health financing and the health workforce in developing countries |
| 3.d | Strengthen all countries' capacity for early warning, risk reduction and management of health risks |
How to summarise the features in an exam. SDG 3 covers the whole life course ("at all ages"), both communicable and non-communicable disease, mental health, injury, environmental risks and the health system itself (universal health coverage, medicines, workforce and financing). You do not need every target number, but you should be able to name several targets and explain them.
Progress on SDG 3: where the world stands
| Indicator | Latest global value | SDG 3 target |
|---|---|---|
| Maternal mortality ratio | 197 per 100,000 live births (2023), down from 228 in 2015 | Below 70 |
| Under-5 mortality | 37.4 per 1,000 live births (2024) | 25 or lower in every country |
| Neonatal mortality | 17.2 per 1,000 live births (2024) | 12 or lower in every country |
| New HIV infections | 1.3 million (2024), down 30% since 2015 | End the epidemic |
| Tuberculosis | 10.7 million people fell ill and 1.23 million died (2024) | End the epidemic |
| Malaria | 282 million cases (2024); 64 cases per 1,000 at risk, up from 59 in 2015 | End the epidemic |
| DTP3 vaccination coverage | 85% (2024), unchanged since 2015 | Vaccines for all |
| UHC service coverage index | 71 (2023), up from 68 in 2015 | Universal health coverage |
Source: UN, The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026 (Goal 3), released 7 July 2026.
Across all goals, the 2026 report found 36 per cent of targets on track or making moderate progress, 49 per cent advancing too slowly and 15 per cent regressed below 2015 baselines. It points to conflict, slower economic growth, climate change, debt and declining official development assistance as headwinds.
Australia's position. As a high-income country, Australia already meets the mortality targets (under-5 mortality 3.6 and neonatal mortality 2.3 per 1,000 live births in 2024, World Bank). Its SDG 3 challenges are closer to targets 3.4 and 3.5 (chronic disease, mental health, alcohol and other drugs) and to equity: health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and people in remote areas lag behind, which is why "leave no one behind" applies here too.
No SDG works alone. Progress on SDG 4 (Quality Education) improves health literacy and lowers child mortality, supporting SDG 3. SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) reduces diarrhoeal and other infectious disease. SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) improve food security and the ability to pay for care. SDG 5 (Gender Equality) gives women control over their health and fertility. The link runs both ways: healthy people can learn, work and escape poverty.
How the SDGs promote health and human development
By targeting the underlying determinants of health (poverty, hunger, education, water, gender equality, decent work and reduced inequality), the SDGs address the conditions that shape health rather than treating illness alone. This mirrors the social model of health on a global scale.
They also promote human development: expanding people's choices and freedoms. Healthier, better-educated people with decent incomes live longer, participate more fully in their communities and have more control over their lives, raising all three dimensions of the Human Development Index.
A common error is treating the SDGs as aid targets only for low-income nations. The SDGs are universal: every country, including Australia, has commitments and gaps to close. State that they apply globally when defining them.
The MDGs (2000 to 2015) had 8 goals and applied mainly to developing countries. The SDGs (2016 to 2030) have 17 goals and 169 targets and apply to all countries. Do not write "the SDGs were adopted in 2000".
SDG 3 also covers mental health, road injuries, sexual and reproductive health, pollution, universal health coverage and the health workforce. Name specific targets to show depth.
A question gives the aid priority "education and health" and asks you to explain how it works towards SDG 5 (Gender Equality) for 4 marks. Build the answer in steps.
Step 1: State the goal and the link
Name SDG 5 (gender equality) and the specific aspects of it you will link to, such as equal economic rights or universal access to reproductive health care and rights. The 2022 examiners' report required a specific aspect of SDG 5 for full marks.
Step 2: Explain the education pathway
Funding education gives girls equal access to school, so they become literate and numerate and more employable. Women can then secure better-paid work and have equal access to economic resources, an aspect of SDG 5. Girls completing school is itself part of SDG 4, so do not stop there.
Step 3: Explain the health pathway
Funding health, including sexual and reproductive health services, gives women access to contraception and family planning, an aspect of SDG 5, so they have more agency over when or if they have children.
Step 4: Tie it back to the goal
Conclude that both pathways advance named aspects of SDG 5, rather than gender equality in general.
Feature 1 (target 3.2): end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 by 2030, with under-5 mortality no higher than 25 per 1,000 live births. Globally it was 37.4 in 2024, so progress on immunisation, safe births, nutrition and treatment of pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria is still needed.
Feature 2 (target 3.8): achieve universal health coverage, so everyone can use quality essential services and medicines without financial hardship. This protects households from being pushed into poverty by health costs.
Each feature earns 2 marks: 1 for naming it accurately, 1 for describing what it involves or why it matters.
How this dot point appears in the VCE exam
- Outline (1 to 3 marks): the rationale or objectives of the SDGs, or key features of SDG 3.
- Explain (3 to 4 marks): how an SDG, a program or an aid priority promotes health and wellbeing or human development (2022 and 2025 VCAA).
- Analyse (4 to 6 marks): how progress on another SDG (1, 2, 4, 5, 6 or 12) supports SDG 3, using data from a stimulus.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of VCAA exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
2022 VCAA Q12bPast paper4 marks'Education and health' is another one of Australia's aid priorities.
Explain how this Australian aid priority works towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, 'Gender equality'. (4 marks)
Show worked answer →
Source: 2022 VCE Health and Human Development examination, Question 12b, and the 2022 examiners' report. Average 1.2 out of 4; 33 per cent scored zero. The report named it as a question where students did not make links between concepts or use meaningful examples.
- What the marks needed
- A reference to a specific aspect of SDG 5 was required for full marks. The report warned that "'girls completing a full course of schooling' is a part of SDG 4, 'Quality education'", so girls finishing school is not, by itself, progress on SDG 5.
- Aspects of SDG 5 (report)
- Ending all forms of discrimination; eliminating violence against females; eliminating early and forced marriage / female genital mutilation; ensuring universal access to reproductive healthcare/rights; ensuring female participation in society/decision-making/politics/economics; providing equal economic rights / ownership / finance / property.
- High-scoring response (report, summarised)
- Education: girls with equal access to school become literate and numerate, which increases their employability, so girls and women can secure higher-paying jobs and have equal access to economic resources, increasing their autonomy (SDG 5). Health: girls can access sexual and reproductive health services to obtain contraception and learn family planning, giving them more agency over when or if they have children (SDG 5).
- For 2026
- The VCAA FAQ says the 2025 study design does not require you to know the priority areas of Australia's aid program, but the skill tested here, linking a program to a specific aspect of an SDG, still applies.
2025 VCAA Q9bPast paper4 marksMany non-government organisations work to combat violence against women and girls to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Describe how the prevention of violence against women and girls could promote two dimensions of health and wellbeing. (4 marks)
Show worked answer →
Source: 2025 VCE Health and Human Development examination, Question 9b, and the 2025 examiners' report. Average 2.2 out of 4. Part a (engaging with an NGO to take action) is on Individual and social action.
- Step 1: an outcome of preventing violence (report)
- Reduced injuries, harm, abuse or trauma; reduced coercive control, child marriages, sexual assault or domestic violence; increased feelings of safety, empowerment or self-worth; reduced stress or anxiety; increased social connection; reduced gender discrimination.
- Step 2: link each outcome to a dimension with a specific example
- Generic statements lost marks. For physical health and wellbeing, "complete daily tasks" was too vague; undertaking physical activity was specific enough. For spiritual, "increased sense of belonging" had to say belonging to what, such as the local community or a cultural group. Mental (reduced stress or anxiety) also fits.
- Why students lost marks
- Writing about the impact of violence rather than the impact of preventing violence "did not address the question".
- High-scoring response (report, summarised)
- Physical: preventing violence reduces the risk of injuries or harm such as female genital mutilation, reducing the risk of contracting infectious diseases such as hepatitis and promoting the functioning of the body and its systems. Social: women and girls are safe enough to attend school or work, where they can socialise with others and develop supportive networks of friends.
Original5 marksThe UN's Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026 found that the global maternal mortality ratio was 197 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, nearly three times the SDG 3 target of fewer than 70. Explain why the SDGs are important for global health, and explain how progress on one other SDG could help reduce maternal mortality. (5 marks)
Show worked answer →
Marks guide (Original, modelled on VCAA criteria): up to 2 marks for the importance of the SDGs for global health and up to 3 marks for a linked explanation. (The VCAA FAQ says students do not need to recall the SDGs' rationale and objectives; they need to discuss the goals' importance for global health and human development.)
Importance for global health (2 marks): the SDGs set shared, measurable targets that direct countries, aid programs and organisations towards the same health outcomes, such as SDG 3's maternal mortality target (1 mark); and because the goals are integrated, progress on the social, economic and environmental causes of ill health (for example poverty, education, water and gender equality) improves health status and human development together (1 mark).
Linked explanation (3 marks), for example SDG 5 (Gender Equality): greater gender equality means women have more say over when and how many children they have and over seeking care (1 mark); fewer early marriages and adolescent pregnancies and more use of family planning and skilled birth attendants reduce the risk of complications (1 mark); so fewer women die in pregnancy and childbirth, lowering the maternal mortality ratio towards target 3.1 (1 mark). SDG 4 (girls' education), SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation reducing infection at birth) or SDG 1 (income to afford care and transport) are also acceptable if the chain ends at maternal deaths.
Practise this
Sources & how we know this
- Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (A/RES/70/1) — United Nations (2015)
- Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages (targets and indicators) — United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
- The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026: Goal 3 — United Nations Statistics Division (2026)
- For over a decade, the SDGs have delivered results, now the world must urgently scale up what works, UN report finds — United Nations (2026)
- World Development Indicators: mortality rate, under-5 and neonatal (Australia) — World Bank (2026)
- 2025 VCE Health and Human Development external assessment report — VCAA (2026)
- 2022 VCE Health and Human Development external assessment report — VCAA (2023)
- VCE Health and Human Development from 2025: Frequently asked questions (updated February 2026) — VCAA (2026)
- VCE Health and Human Development Study Design (from 2025) — VCAA
- VCE Health and Human Development: examination specifications, past examinations and reports — VCAA