National Allergy Council 2024 Highlights

11 December 2024

We are pleased to share the National Allergy Council highlights for 2024.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the National Allergy Council Directors and Co-chairs, our Project Co-leads, the members of our Project Working Groups, our Allergy 250K peer mentors and all the stakeholders including consumers, who have engaged with us this year and contributed to the implementation of the National Allergy Strategy, including volunteering their time to participate in Allergy 250K camps.

Events

We hosted an infant feeding webinar for health professionals and a milk allergy webinar for children’s education and care staff. We conducted 10 infant feeding focus groups with consumers and health professionals. We also conducted an infant feeding consultation, 2 drug allergy consultations, 2 anaphylaxis reporting system consultations and a transitioning care workshop.

The National Allergy Council hosted an Allergy 250K school-aged teens camp in March, an Allergy 250K young adult camp in July and an Allergy 250K Fun Day in November. These events helped educate and improve the confidence of 71 eight to 25 year olds living with severe allergy. Monthly video chats connecting young adults living with severe allergy. We also trained 5 new Allergy 250K peer mentors.

In-person education

We had stands and spoke to many people at 16 conferences and gave 16 conference presentations.

 We exhibited and ran a workshop for 150 delegates at the Institute of Hospitality in Health Care (IHHC) conference in Perth. In our workshop, participants from hospitals and aged care worked on some of the more difficult aspects of food allergen management in health care settings, such as ‘how do you keep allergy information in your menu system up to date’, ‘how do you manage multiple food allergies’ and ‘what do you do about ingredients with precautionary allergen labelling?’ Participants had great ideas and solutions and showed that best practice food allergen management principles can be tailored to local settings.

Online education

Our websites helped educate over 658,773 people about allergic conditions.

Over 27,000 people completed one of the National Allergy Council All about Allergens training courses. This brings the total number of people completing the courses to around 180,000 since the courses were launched in 2017.

 Resources distributed

We distributed more than 2,500 copies of the best practice guidelines and more than 200,000 National Allergy Council project bookmarks.

Collaborations

The National Allergy Council has collaborated with several organisations and key stakeholders to help improve allergy management, including:

• The NSW Food Authority to develop standardised training materials for Food Safety Supervisor training by Registered Training Organisations.
• ACECQA to communicate about allergies and anaphylaxis and available evidence-based, best practice resources.
• Partnering with the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM) to pilot a national online allergy advice service.
• RACGP, ACRRM and the Australian Paediatric Society to deliver an allergy training course and network for rural and regional general practitioners and paediatricians.
• The Sparked community who are driving the implementation of digital health standards, coordinated by the CSIRO. The National Allergy Council has been involved in decision-making around how allergy information is recorded on electronic health records.
• The Australian Digital Health Agency to improve allergy documentation within My Health Record.
• The Healthy Eating Advisory Service to develop resources and education mini modules for cooks and chefs in children’s education and care.
• The Australian Camps Association to provide a webinar about managing food allergies in the camp setting.
• Connecting the Dots to provide an infant feeding webinar for health professionals.
• The Go and Grow toolbox to develop two podcast recordings about infant feeding. 

Social voice

We posted over 425 social media posts that reached more than 354,229 people.

Guidelines and standards

The National Allergy Council have worked with ASCIA, the NACE and Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia to progress an update of the ASCIA guidelines for infant feeding and allergy prevention.

The National Allergy Council has undertaken a Delphi process to develop standardised drug allergy terminology. We have also worked with ASCIA and the NACE to progress penicillin allergy de-labelling guidelines for adults.

We have engaged with key stakeholders to develop a Transitioning from paediatric to adult allergy services Standard and are in the process of developing an implementation guide to support the Standard.

Public policy

14 submissions were made that helped in shaping public policy to improve the quality of life for people living with allergic conditions. We also reviewed 11 documents including national standards, state guidelines and state-based training.

Merry Christmas

On behalf of the National Allergy Council, we wish you a safe and Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.