Improved understanding of allergy will benefit ECEC professionals MCRI says

A series of specific recommendations made during the 2020 Parliamentary Inquiry into Allergies and Anaphylaxis have now been brought to fruition, with funding for them announced in the 2022 Federal budget. 

 

The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) says this will benefit Australians and their families living with allergy, along with healthcare providers, teachers, childcare workers and food service providers.

 

Associate Professor Kirsten Perrett, Acting Director of the Centre for Food & Allergy Research and Co-Group Leader of the Institute’s Population Allergy group, welcomed and congratulated the Federal Government on its positive response to the Parliamentary Inquiry.

 

As a result of the inquiry fundings and subsequent Budget commitments two new allergy organisations have been funded that will work together to deliver world-leading initiatives and research to improve consumer safety and prevent deaths from severe allergic reactions.

 

NACE and NAC will reshape allergy landscape

 

The Centre for Food & Allergy Research (CFAR), based at MCRI, will expand to become the National Allergy Centre of Excellence (NACE).

 

The Centre will generate and synthesise the evidence base that underpins the activities of the proposed National Allergy Council (NAC), to ensure that Australia remains at the forefront of evidence-based management of allergic disease.

 

“The establishment of the NACE will be a huge leap forward for our understanding of allergies, especially in an Australian context, and will provide a solid evidence-base for initiatives of the NAC,” Associate Professor Perrett said.

 

“Together, we will implement the first national allergy registry alongside a live anaphylaxis reporting system, which will facilitate precision medicine and improve consumer safety and prevent anaphylaxis deaths.”

 

The NAC, she continued, will function as a natural progression of the highly valued and successful National Allergy Strategy.

 

A&AAA and ASCIA partnerships to continue

 

The Council will continue to be a partnership between the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA) and Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia (A&AA), Australia’s lead medical and allergy patient support organisations.

 

Together, the two organisations (NAC and NACE) will be established with $26.9 million in funding over four years.

 

ASCIA Co-chair of the National Allergy Strategy Dr Preeti Joshi said the funding would allow urgent projects to progress.

 

“We would like to thank the Australian Government, and Minister Hunt in particular, for investing in the health and wellbeing of the many Australians living with allergic diseases,” Dr Joshi said. 

 

Following specific recommendations to the Parliament’s “Walking the Allergy Tightrope” report from May 2020, the NACE will form a National Allergy Clinical Trials network to develop and implement national large-scale adaptive platform allergy trials, embedded in routine clinical care across Australia.

 

These platform trials, already in place for cancer treatment, would allow futile allergy treatments to be dropped and new treatments to be added as they become available and will ensure that every Australian with allergy is offered the best available treatment and that clinical care guidelines are continuously updated with the latest evidence.

 

The NACE will also establish a National Allergy Registry and Biobank, including health care use, phenotypic data and biological samples from children and adults with food, drug, vaccine, pollen and insect allergy.

 

The National Allergy Registry and Biobank will act as a clinical quality registry, a platform for paradigm-shifting in understanding and managing allergic diseases and present new opportunities for health care practice, research and discovery.

 

For more information please visit the MCRI website, here.