ASCIA’s main role in the National Allergy Council Shared Care for Allergy project is to improve allergy education, training and mentoring for health professionals, and advocate for funded food and drug allergy challenges.

To help achieve this, the objectives of the inaugural ASCIA meeting for Heads of hospital Allergy/Immunology Departments in Australia and New Zealand (held on 2-3 August 2024) were to define:

• Scope of allergy services (including education, training, mentoring) provided in public hospitals with paediatric and/or adult allergy/immunology departments.
• What resources (tool kits) should be developed by ASCIA to enable equitable access to allergy care in hospitals, and by other health professionals outside of public hospital allergy/immunology departments.
• How oral food and drug allergy challenges are conducted for paediatric and adult patients.
• What are the most urgent and long term allergy workforce issues that need to be addressed.
• How can the transition from paediatric to adult allergy services be improved.

A total of 40 heads of departments, or their nominated representatives participated in the meeitng that was held at the RACP building, Macquarie Street Sydney. Heads of paediatric and adult departments met separately on Friday, then had a joint meeting on Saturday. We thank all paricipants for volunteering their time to contribute to this important meeting.

Based on discussions at this meeting, ASCIA plans to develop several new resources:

• New ASCIA Referral toolkit, including referral templates for GPs (to refer to private or public paediatric or adult allergy services), letter templates for redirecting referrals, and patient management summaries (for example, to assist young adults with transition or transfer from paediatric to adult medical care). These resources will be located  on the ASCIA website www.allergy.org.au/patients/allergy-and-clinical-immunology-services and will be developed in consultation with ASCIA committees and the National Allergy Council. 
• New ASCIA Guides for health professionals including algorithms or flowcharts on urticaria, food allergy, skin testing, eczema flares and different types of rhinitis.
• New ASCIA FAQ for patients and carers on a range of topics, including non-allergic rhinitis, vocal cord dysfunction, large local reactions to venom and food allergy in adults. 

ASCIA also plans to develop innovative solutions to improve access and address a wide range of learning styles and health literacy, which was discussed at this meeting. Projects include:

• Developing animated video versions of ASCIA anaphylaxis refresher training courses - ASCIA has worked with a world leading video production company that specialises in healthcare and the video will be available in early September 2024.
• Improving distribution of ASCIA online resources through QR codes and other technology - work is already underway on this project with the popular Quicklinks initiative. www.allergy.org.au/about-ascia/quick-links
• Adding more images (infographics and charts) in ASCIA online information.

ASCIA looks forward to providing updates on these projects in monthly ASCIA e-newsletters and at the ASCIA 2024 Conference.

This news item was issued on 5 August 2024 by Jill Smith, CEO of ASCIA, the peak professional body for clinical immunology and allergy in Australia and New Zealand.