Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention

Our aim is for all kids to have healthy skin. We work with communities to reduce the burden of Strep A skin sores and sore throats to prevent rheumatic fever.

The skin is the body’s largest and only externally visible organ. The skin protects the inner workings of the body, and so healthy skin is essential for maintaining overall health and well-being. Itchy skin infections such as scabies, tinea and headlice and eczema can cause breaks in the skin, facilitating the entry of Streptococcus pyogenes (Strep A) and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria and development of skin sores and boils.

Current research shows skin infections affect more than 162 million children around the world at any one time, with the highest numbers in the Pacific, Asia, and Africa. In Australia, nearly half of remote living Aboriginal children experience a skin sore at any one time, by far the highest rate in the world. We are working to better understand how much of a problem skin sores are for urban living Aboriginal children.

Skin infections can cause shame and stigma, loss of sleep, poor concentration at school, cross-infection with friends and family, and serious downstream health consequences including: sepsis, bone and joint infections, Acute Rheumatic Fever (ARF), Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) and Acute post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis (APSGN).

A big part of the problem is that amongst competing priorities, skin infections often aren’t recognised and are commonly left untreated. Whilst skin infections are so common, their importance to overall health has been forgotten.

The Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention team is one of five teams in the END RHD program working across all aspects of RHD prevention. The Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention Team have a focus on primary prevention of RHD through programmatic and community-driven approaches to healthy skin, improved detection of sore throats and other aspects of primordial and primary prevention. When these don’t work, we lead hospital based clinical trials to improve treatment outcomes for kids.

National Healthy Skin Guideline

National Healthy Skin Guideline is designed to help health care providers easily recognise, diagnose, and treat skin infections using online resources such as photographs, learning tools and an interactive questionnaire. The Guideline also provides plenty of information on how to stop the spread of germs and keep skin strong and healthy.

Download the National Healthy Skin Guideline

Healthy Skin Resource

Our team has worked alongside Elder Researchers and community members from across WA to bring together a suite of Healthy Skin resources that are both culturally and geographically appropriate. These resources include health promotion books that incorporate traditional language and medicine, music videos, clinical factsheets, and guidelines.

View the Healthy Skin Resource Hub

Future projects

Figure 1. Project timeline for the Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention team. Project titles aligned with their corresponding stage of the Aboriginal Research Standard Process outlined in the Guidelines for the Standards for the Conduct of Aboriginal Health Research. Projects are separated into Kimberly region and Metro region. As of March 2024.