Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention

Skin is important in Aboriginal culture as it is central to identity, determines kinship, connection to country and creates belonging.

Maintaining healthy skin is important for maintaining overall physical and cultural health and well-being. Current research shows nearly half of all children living in remote Indigenous communities have a skin infection such as scabies or skin sores at any one time. More broadly, skin infections affect >162 million children around the world at any one time, with the highest burden in the Pacific, Asia and Africa. The skin is the largest organ of the body, is always on show and visible to the world. Infections of the skin cause stigma, sleeplessness, poor concentration at school, cross-infection with friends and family and downstream serious health consequences including deaths from sepsis, rheumatic heart disease (RHD) and chronic kidney disease.

A big part of the problem is that skin infections often aren’t recognised and are left untreated. They have become so common that they are considered ‘normal’ and this is something we urgently need to change. Currently, remote living Australian Aboriginal children have the highest burden of Strep A skin infections in the world, which is likely a key contributor to the very high rates of ARF and RHD in these populations.

Our team is complemented by the four other teams in the END RHD program with ongoing collaboration across all stages of RHD pathogenesis.

Team Highlights

• The STARFISH Project, which focusses on the primordial prevention of Strep A transmission, intersecting with skin and sore throat research to inform primary prevention of Strep A.
• The launch of the first-ever National Healthy Skin Guideline, designed to help health care providers easily recognise, diagnose, and treat skin infections with a suite of online resources and videos that can be accessed by clinicians anywhere in Australia
• The initiation of the SToP Trial, a clinical trial operating across the Kimberley to See, Treat and Prevent skin infections in Aboriginal children through implementing best practice, community driven, skin health management practices into sustainable health care in the Kimberley with lessons for Australia and the world.
• The publication of the Skin Health Situational Analysis, which has informed skin disease control programs for the Kimberley.