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Six weeks, nine community visits and 380 kids – it’s a wrap for round one of the StoP Trial!
The generous support of West Australians through Channel 7’s Telethon Trust will help support crucial child health research at The Kids Research Institute Australia in 2022.
Our skin, the body’s largest organ, protects us and maintains overall health. Untreated recurring skin infections like impetigo and scabies severely impact children. The Kids is at the forefront of combatting skin infections, particularly within remote Aboriginal communities experiencing some of the world’s highest rates.
Aboriginal families across Western Australia are being equipped with the knowledge to take early action against potentially life-threatening skin infections thanks to the launch of a Strong Skin phone app.
Recruitment in research can be challenging in Australian Aboriginal contexts. We aimed to evaluate the SToP (See, Treat, Prevent skin infections) trial recruitment approach for Aboriginal families to identify barriers and facilitators and understand the utility of the visual resource used.
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.
A high burden of bacterial skin infections is well documented in remote-living Indigenous children and young people in high-income countries.
Mycobacteroides abscessus (MABS) is within the non-tuberculous mycobacteria family. It inhabits soil and water, exhibits multi-antibiotic resistance and causes opportunistic lung infections, which may progress to symptomatic MABS-pulmonary disease (MABS-PD) associated with substantial morbidity, increased healthcare utilisation, impaired quality of life and increased mortality.
Remote-living Aboriginal children in Australia contend with higher rates of skin infections than non-Indigenous children. This work was embedded within a stepped-wedge, cluster randomised controlled trial aiming to halve the rate of skin infections in remote Kimberley communities. It outlines and reflects upon the co-development of a health promotion resource in partnership with the East Kimberley community of Warmun, whilst understanding community perceptions of its impact.
Japan recently experienced a record surge in streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. Our environmental surveillance study reveals that Streptococcus pyogenes persists seasonally, peaking in autumn and winter in rural Japan. The dominant emm1 M1UK sublineage and csrS mutations heighten virulence, highlighting the urgent need for targeted surveillance and interventions.