One in five Aus­tralians have an aller­gy, one in ten babies have a food aller­gy – and aller­gies are on the rise.

“But there is a short­age of spe­cial­ists in this field, cre­at­ing incred­i­bly long wait­ing peri­ods to get atten­tion in pub­lic hos­pi­tals, and bot­tle­necks for peo­ple to get a prop­er diag­no­sis,” Heather says.

“In addi­tion, there is a fair amount of mis­in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the issue of aller­gies in gen­er­al, which con­fus­es people.”

The range of aller­gies and the range of symp­toms and effects, means some peo­ple may not take aller­gies as seri­ous­ly as they should, Heather says. 

“That’s why we need well-edu­cat­ed health pro­fes­sion­als in the community.”

Impor­tant resources avail­able to health pro­fes­sion­als include man­u­als and evi­dence-based resources to give guid­ance, and online oppor­tu­ni­ties to under­take edu­ca­tion and train­ing through the Aus­tralasian Soci­ety of Clin­i­cal Immunol­o­gy and Aller­gy (ASCIA).

Heather, who has worked for the past fif­teen years on projects to improve health­care ser­vices in Aus­tralia, is man­ag­ing the nation­al Shared Care for Aller­gy project which aims to improve access to aller­gy care, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple liv­ing in rur­al and remote areas. The right care has a pos­i­tive effect on people’s lives, she says.

“In the first instance, the health pro­fes­sion­al needs to know if it is an aller­gy or some­thing else, and then what to do next,” Heather says, “[so] cor­rect diag­no­sis and man­age­ment of aller­gies is very important.

“Of course, avoid­ing the cause of an aller­gy is cru­cial, but not always easy. For a food aller­gy, for exam­ple, it’s impor­tant to know how to read prod­uct labels. Get­ting the right edu­ca­tion and sup­port around that time is impor­tant. Dieti­tians, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with addi­tion­al train­ing in aller­gies, can be very helpful.

“Par­ents need guid­ance too, to help their chil­dren and man­age their aller­gies while they’re younger, and help their chil­dren learn how to man­age their aller­gies as they get old­er and become more inde­pen­dent, par­tic­u­lar­ly if it is a severe food allergy.

“Oth­er aller­gies can be caused by cer­tain mate­ri­als, such as latex, and knowl­edge is need­ed to deal with con­di­tions such as eczema and aller­gic rhini­tis which can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on day-to-day living.”

Heather, who is work­ing on the project under the lead­er­ship of a pae­di­atric aller­gy spe­cial­ist from ASCIA and head of a nation­al sup­port organ­i­sa­tion for peo­ple with aller­gies (Aller­gy & Ana­phy­lax­is Aus­tralia), is con­sult­ing with a wide range of stake­hold­ers, such as peo­ple with aller­gies, par­ents of chil­dren affect­ed by aller­gies, health pro­fes­sion­als car­ing for these peo­ple and clin­i­cal immunology/​allergy specialists.

“We want to make sure that peo­ple across the board, in cities and in rur­al and remote areas, get the best care pos­si­ble, so they can man­age their aller­gy and live well,” says Heather.

“It’s gen­er­al­ly a life­long sit­u­a­tion for most peo­ple, and it’s impor­tant to learn to man­age it.

“The focus on rur­al and remote areas is because it is acknowl­edged that the short­age of pro­fes­sion­al health work­ers in gen­er­al is a prob­lem. Oth­er bar­ri­ers to good care [include] dis­tance and long trav­el times to get to the cities.”

Heather says that the Shared Care for Aller­gy project is also look­ing at var­i­ous options to cope with the short­age such as a point of con­tact that health pro­fes­sion­als can tap into to access the avail­able knowl­edge base, and the poten­tial for out­reach aller­gy clin­ics, where teams can go out and con­duct clin­ics, per­haps with local health pro­fes­sion­als learn­ing ways to take care of their patients on the job.