Skin health in northern Australia
Hannah M. M. Thomas A * , Stephanie Enkel A B , Tracy McRae A B , Victoria Cox C D , Heather-Lynn Kessaris C , Abbey J. Ford A , Rebecca Famlonga A E , Rebekah Newton A F , Ingrid Amgarth-Duff A , Alexandra Whelan A and Asha C. Bowen A B GA Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases, Telethon Kids Institute, 15 Hospital Avenue, Nedlands, WA 6009, Australia.
B University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
C Royal Darwin Hospital, 105 Rocklands Drive, Tiwi, NT 0810, Australia.
D Menzies School of Health Research, John Matthew Building, Royal Darwin Hospital Campus, Rocklands Drive, Casuarina, NT 0810, Australia.
E Murdoch University, 90 South Street, Murdoch, WA 6150, Australia.
F Royal Perth Hospital, Victoria Square, Perth, WA 6000, Australia.
G Perth Children’s Hospital, 15 Hospital Avenue, Nedlands, WA 6009, Australia.
Dr Hannah M. M. Thomas is an early career postdoctoral researcher at the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases, Telethon Kids Institute. Hannah’s research aims to reduce the burden of skin infections for children living in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia through the implementation of a holistic package of clinical, preventative, and capacity-building skin health interventions. |
Stephanie Enkel is a PhD Candidate at the School of Medicine, University of Western Australia and the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases, Telethon Kids Institute. Her research focuses on environmental health initiatives to halt the transmission of Streptococcus pyogenes infection in remote Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. |
Tracy McRae is a PhD Candidate and Research Assistant at the Telethon Kids Institute. Her research focuses on prevention initiatives to help reduce the burden of skin infections in remote Aboriginal communities. Through this work, Tracy has been working with communities to embed local language into healthy skin resources. |
Dr Victoria Cox is a medical doctor at Royal Darwin Hospital and a PhD student at the Menzies School of Health Research with an interest in Neglected Tropical Diseases with skin manifestations. She undertook the MPhil in Evidence Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford as a General Sir John Monash Scholar between 2016 and 2018. Victoria is currently working on a collaborative project to estimate the burden of scabies in Indigenous communities and consider the impact of undertaking an ivermectin-based MDA treatment program in northern Australia. |
Dr Heather-Lynn Kessaris is an Alawa and Marra woman from the Northern Territory. She initially completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Western Australia in 2014, majoring in Population Health and Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing, before going on to complete her Doctor of Medicine in 2018 in Perth, Western Australia. She is currently a resident medical officer based at the Royal Darwin Hospital and has a keen interest in dermatology. |
Abbey J. Ford is a Project Officer on the See, Treat, Prevent Skin Sores and Scabies (SToP) Trial. She works with East Kimberley Aboriginal communities to coordinate data collection visits and run health promotion projects, with the ultimate aim to decrease skin infections in remote communities. |
Rebecca Famlonga is an Aboriginal woman descending from the Wadawurrung people in Southwestern Victoria. She has more than 20 years of experience in Education and has held teaching and leadership positions in secondary schools across Western Australia. Rebecca is currently a Senior Research Officer at the Telethon Kids Institute and is completing her Masters by Research at Murdoch University. |
Dr Rebekah Newton is a Doctor of Medicine graduate from the University of Western Australia, and recipient of the Australian Medical Association WA Prize for 2021. She is an aspiring paediatrician, with a special interest in rural medicine and infectious diseases, and has worked on the SToP Trial to examine the relationship between head lice and impetigo. |
Dr Ingrid Amgarth-Duff is an early-career, postdoctoral researcher at the Telethon Kids Institute in Perth, Western Australia. She is leading the development of the 2nd Edition of the National Healthy Skin Guidelines, which has been developed for treating clinicians. The guidelines focus on the prevention and treatment of skin infections for Aboriginal populations living in remote areas of Australia. |
Alexandra Whelan is Program Manager for the ENDRHD Program at the Telethon Kids Institute, a team of researchers committed to ending Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) in Australia. Alexandra manages their portfolio of research, which aims to accelerate research, clinical trials, treatment methods, policy and advocacy; ultimately working to prevent diseases caused by Strep A, including skin infections, which contribute to the development of RHD. |
Associate Professor Asha C. Bowen is a clinician scientist working across the Perth Children’s Hospital as a paediatric infectious disease specialist and the Telethon Kids Institute as Head of the Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention Team and the ENDRHD Program. Asha and her team launched the inaugural National Healthy Skin Guidelines to guide clinicians in the recognition and evidence-based treatment of skin infections, and are updating this resource in 2022. Asha has more than 10 years’ experience leading infectious diseases research and investigator-initiated clinical trials focused on issues significant to Aboriginal child health. |
Microbiology Australia 43(3) 98-103 https://doi.org/10.1071/MA22033
Submitted: 15 June 2022 Accepted: 20 September 2022 Published: 10 October 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of the ASM. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Achieving healthy skin requires the prevention of infectious diseases that affect the skin. Prevention activities range from environmental health improvements to address inequities in living situations, through to community-wide treatment programs to reduce transmission and improve skin health. In this paper we discuss the pathogens that cause and conditions that arise when skin is infected, the burden of disease in northern Australia, and some of the current research underway to address this high burden, which predominantly affects remote-living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families.
Keywords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations, environmental health, health promotion, impetigo, infectious diseases, northern Australia, scabies, skin health.
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