The National Asthma Council has announced that Associate Professor Rachel Peters has received the 2024 Asthma and Airways Career Development Fellowship, jointly funded by the Council and the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand.
She plans to use the Fellowship to develop an innovative asthma risk prediction tool for children that extends beyond traditional asthma predictors by integrating comprehensive data on food allergies.
Associate Professor Peters said that this will be the first prediction model to integrate food allergy, a key driver of adverse respiratory outcomes.
“Development of an asthma prediction model that integrates food allergy is of critical importance to help identify young children at high risk of developing asthma, especially with the high prevalence of food allergy in Australia.
“I am delighted that the 2024 Asthma and Airways Career Development Fellowship will allow me to develop and validate a novel prediction model for asthma risk in children,” she said.
Associate Professor Peters is the Principal Investigator of HealthNuts* and EarlyNuts*, two population-based longitudinal studies of food allergy and asthma recruited with identical methods and is ideally placed to establish a new paradigm for more precise asthma risk assessment.
“The HealthNuts study showed that infants with food allergy, even if their food allergy resolves, are four times more likely to have asthma at six years of age, compared to children who never had food allergy.
“My aim is to develop a prediction model that will greatly assist clinicians to provide early asthma diagnoses and management and promote prevention strategies in high-risk children,” she said.
National Asthma Council Australia CEO Rhonda Cleveland said they were pleased to contribute to Associate Professor Peters’s research and proud to assist with the career development of an emerging respiratory expert.
“Supporting the Asthma and Airways Career Development Fellowship aligns with the National Asthma Council Australia’s commitment to build capacity and knowledge within the research and clinical community and to drive best practice in asthma care using evidence based guidelines and collaborative partnerships.
“It is also a way to give thanks for the generous support of many respiratory experts who provide their expertise in the development of the National Asthma Council Australia resources and educational programs,” she said.
