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STopping Acute Rheumatic Fever Infections to Strengthen Health (STARFISH)

STopping Acute Rheumatic Fever Infections to Strengthen Health (STARFISH) brings together a diverse and multidisciplinary research team to investigate the most effective environmental health initiatives (EHIs) aimed at reducing Strep A infections and prevent Acute Rheumatic Fever (ARF).

Investigators

  • Professor Jonathan Carapetis
  • Professor Asha Bowen
  • Professor Paul Memmott
  • Associate Professor Glenn Pearson
  • Professor David Bloom
  • Professor Anna Ralph
  • Dr Mark Davies
  • Dr Rosemary Wyber
  • Dr Tim Barnett
  • Associate Professor Nina Lansbury
  • Dr Andrew Redmond
  • Dr Rebecca Chisholm
  • Pete Gething
  • Associate Professor Andrea Beaton
  • Associate Professor Kalinda Griffiths
  • Aunty Vicki Wade
  • Dr Jeffrey Cannon
  • Professor Sandra Eades
  • Professor Paul Torzillo
  • Professor Alex Brown

External collaborators

  • The University of Queensland
  • Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
  • Menzies School of Health Research
  • Doherty Institute
  • La Trobe University
  • The University of Melbourne
  • Cincinnatti Children's
  • The University of Sydney

Funder

National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)

STARFISH

STopping Acute Rheumatic Fever Infections to Strengthen Health (STARFISH) brings together a diverse and multidisciplinary research team to investigate the most effective environmental health initiatives (EHIs) aimed at reducing Strep A infections and prevent Acute Rheumatic Fever (ARF). STARFISH will produce evidence with embedded research translation to implement strategies that facilitate the prevention of ARF.

  • Check4Strep: a co-designed community-based project to demonstrate where the Strep A is and how it’s being spread. This involves a series of community engagement days for target populations to have conversations about, and get tested for, Strep A.
  • Exploring Healthy Living Practice 2 ‘Washing clothes and bedding’
    • Mapping the growth of rural and remote community laundries in Australia and exploring barriers/enablers to household washing machine use
    • Understanding Strep A and major skin pathogens on fabrics and in laundering
    • Understanding the standards landscape for laundering in Australia
    • Guidance about effective laundering in the remote Australian context 
    • 'Yarning about Washing' (Place-based yarns in the East Kimberley to hear what people think about washing practices)
  • Improving primary care data use in communities to understand the effects of housing on health outcomes: Local clinics are key in managing housing-associated infectious diseases (HAIDs). This project is seeking to develop a tool to monitor HAIDs using routinely collected primary care (clinic) data so community-controlled health services can generate, interpret and use their own data.
  • The Efficacy of Strep A self-swabbing (ESTA) Study aimed to undertake surveillance of those working in a medical research institute to determine the sensitivity of self-collected collected pharyngeal swabs for Strep A among asymptomatic carriers.
  • Optimising targeted investigations of Strep A transmission and EHIs assessment: This project will develop an adaptable framework to identify the optimal design of Strep A and EHI studies, to easier identify elements of Strep A transmission pathways that can be targeted by EHIs to disrupt transmission.