AUSTRALIA no longer leads the world as the country with the highest melanoma rates, losing the mantle to New Zealand.

A study has found per capita rates of the deadly skin cancer in Australia have fallen steadily since 2005 to 48 cases per 100,000 people in 2011, and are predicted to keep dropping during the next 15 years.

New Zealand rates are still on the rise and were 50 cases per 100,000 in 2011.

Population health expert David Whiteman led the study of six populations with moderate to high melanoma incidence, including the UK, Norway, Sweden and caucasian Americans.

He said Australia was the only one of the six where melanoma rates had started to fall, putting the decline down to effective sun smart campaigns since the 1980s and measures introduced into schools, child care centres and work places to decrease ultraviolet radiation exposure.

Professor Whiteman said Slip, Slop, Slap had contributed to a decline in melanoma rates for people aged 50 and under, but were still increasing in older Australians who had most likely already sustained sun damage before the public health campaigns began.

The research in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology also speculates that some of the decline in melanoma rates among younger Australians may have resulted from increasing screen time, less time outdoors and fewer children walking or cycling to school.

Although rates per capita are decreasing, the number of melanomas diagnosed annually is still on the rise because of population growth and the ageing of the Australian population.

In 2011, 11,570 new cases of melanoma were diagnosed in Australia.

Professor Whiteman said Australians could still do “so much better” in protecting themselves from skin cancer.

“We pour a huge amount of money into treating skin cancer through surgery and increasingly, through expensive drugs, which are of benefit to those who are suffering,” he said.

“We should be investing a fraction of that into more prevention.”

Mother-of-two Laura Thompson, of Glenelg, makes sure her young children Maggie and Elijah are sun smart.

“When I was younger it was a very different message (but) these days we are pushing our children to slip, slop, slap,” she said.

“At the beach, it’s always a hat and long sleeve T-shirt or rashie that they can wear in the water.”

According to the latest statistics from the Cancer Council SA, more than 700 South Australians are diagnosed with melanoma every year and more than 75 per cent of adolescents in SA reported burning each summer.

— with KATRINA STOKES