Australia has made gains in allergy research, prevention, and care, but experts say a major blind spot remains.
Australia’s allergy leaders are calling for allergic disease to be captured in major national datasets, warning that gaps in prevalence data are hampering health policy, service planning and research.
The National Allergy Council (NAC) and the National Allergy Centre of Excellence (NACE) took the case to Parliament House today, where clinicians, researchers, consumer advocates, and people living with allergic disease highlighted progress made since 2022 and outlined priorities for the years ahead.
The event coincided with the launch of Australia’s first Parliamentary Friends of Allergy group and the release of Allergy Update 2026, which puts improved national data collection near the top of the agenda.
The report described allergic disease as one of Australia’s fastest-growing chronic health conditions, affecting around one in three Australians and imposing an estimated $18.9 billion in financial losses each year, plus another $44.6 billion in wellbeing losses.
Despite that burden, allergy-related questions are not currently included in the Australian Census.
NAC chief executive Dr Sandra Vale said national data collection now needed to catch up with advances in other areas of allergy care.
“Australia has made significant progress in tackling allergic disease, and the next step is ensuring we have the national data needed to guide future policy and care,” she said.
“Despite around one in three Australians living with an allergic condition, the Census does not currently collect information on allergic disease.
“Including it in future national data collections would help governments and health services better understand its prevalence and impact, informing future policy, planning, research, and investment.”
The Allergy Update calls for allergy-related questions to be incorporated not only into the Census, but also the National Health Survey and National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey. Better data would strengthen the evidence used to develop guidelines and determine policy, research priorities, and investment, the report’s authors said.
The numbers already available point to a substantial clinical burden. One in 10 Australian babies has a confirmed food allergy, one in four Australians has allergic rhinitis and one in 20 adults reports a medication allergy. More than 2400 people are hospitalised with anaphylaxis each year and about 20 Australians die from severe allergic reactions.
The report also points to disparities in disease burden, with First Nations Australians twice as likely to present to hospital with asthma and other allergy-related illnesses. Emergency department presentations among First Nations people increased significantly between 2018 and 2023.
The Parliament House showcase today was also intended to demonstrate how much has changed since NAC and NACE began their federally supported collaboration in 2022.
Among the headline achievements, 3648 people with allergies have been enrolled across six NACE-embedded research programs, including almost 600 families participating in the national standardised peanut oral immunotherapy program, ADAPT.
Three “living” systematic reviews covering drug, food and respiratory allergy have also been established to underpin ASCIA guidelines, public health programs, training, and consumer resources.
NACE has analysed data from more than 768,000 people in existing research datasets, including work establishing updated allergy prevalence estimates from 17,090 National Health Survey participants. It is also building the NACE Allergy BioRepository, or ALBI, to integrate fragmented allergy datasets and support further research.
Prevention efforts have included publication of the ASCIA infant-feeding guideline for food allergy prevention and development of the Nip allergies in the Bub Food Follower app, designed to help parents introduce common food allergens to infants. Use of Nip allergies in the Bub information, recipes, food ideas, and videos has increased by 66% each year.
Education has expanded substantially as well. Completions of ASCIA’s online anaphylaxis and allergy courses for healthcare professionals increased 315%, with 23,172 completions in 2025.
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Anaphylaxis training for schools and children’s education and care recorded 129,707 completions that year, while 282,000 food-service workers have been trained in providing safe food for people with food allergies.
Access to clinical expertise has also been targeted. The allergy assist education and specialist advice platform has supported 867 doctors, with a particular focus on rural clinicians and improving access to allergy care.
More than 4400 people have also received one-to-one support through the Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia National Allergy Helpline.
NACE director and paediatric allergist Professor Kirsten Perrett said the achievements demonstrated the value of a coordinated national approach.
“Together, we’ve strengthened allergy prevention, trained the next generation of allergy researchers, improved access to specialist expertise and built a nationally coordinated research network that is improving care for Australians living with allergic disease,” Professor Perrett said.
“We welcome the establishment of Australia’s first Parliamentary Friends of Allergy group as an important step in maintaining this momentum and strengthening collaboration to improve outcomes for Australians living with allergic disease.”
The new parliamentary group is co-chaired by paediatrician and Labor MP Dr Mike Freelander, who said allergic disease deserved the same attention in national data collections as other chronic conditions.
“Allergic disease is a growing chronic condition, and we need to progress towards capturing good data on allergic disease, just as we do for other chronic conditions, through national data collections such as the Australian Census and National Health Survey,” he said.
Parliamentarians received a hands-on introduction to the issue after today’s showcase, as they were offered skin prick testing for common airborne allergens alongside allergy education.
See the Allergy Update 2026 here.
