Food Allergy Center
The Food Allergy Center at Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center has three main goals:
Patient care, education and research for children and adolescents suffering from potentially life threatening allergic reactions to common foods.
Public awareness of food allergies has grown remarkably. In all forms of media we see and hear reports about the dangers of being allergic to foods. Airlines have created peanut- free flights. Schools have had to accommodate a flood of dietary requests from parents of food allergic children. Laws are being changed to allow Emergency Medical Service personnel and good samaritans to administer emergency medications in cases of severe allergic reactions. Allergy specialists are amazed at the increasing number of children who have been referred because of food allergies, particularly severe allergic reactions to peanuts and tree nuts. Despite all the attention this subject has received, there is still much misinformation among the lay public (parents, teachers, school nurses, the media), and a lack of knowledge about food allergies on the part of primary care practitioners.
The mission of the Center is threefold: Patient Care; Education; and Research. What do we hope to achieve? Consider the two-year-old child who has developed breathing difficulties and facial swelling following the ingestion of milk, and consider the fear that his or her parent would endure when their child is away at school, at a party or even at a friend's house. With appropriate education and a treatment plan some of that parent's fear can be alleviated. Consider also the child who has been incorrectly diagnosed as food allergic. That parent needlessly suffers the same anxieties. This situation can be avoided by appropriate testing, and the need for an elimination diet averted.
The first objective of the center is direct patient care. Specialized physicians, nurses, nutritionists and social workers of the center provide state-of-the-art evaluation and intervention. Traditional allergy evaluation and skin testing is supplemented by double blind placebo controlled food challenges, the "gold standard" for identification of a true food allergy. Currently there are approximately 150 patients with food allergies followed by the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center.
Education is the second objective of the center. All personnel actively participate in educational programs and lectures to their peers and to schools and the general public. The center sponsors teaching conferences, including one directed at primary care practitioners, and another directed towards school nurses, teachers and other school personnel. Additional means of educating the public include speaking engagements, newspaper articles and radio programs.
The final objective of the Center for Food Allergies is original research. Funding for these endeavors is provided by medical center grants or through Federal or other outside sources of funding. Projects include those already initiated at the medical center, such as the relationship of various tree nuts and their ability to cross react when causing clinical allergic reactions.
Patients treated at the Center will benefit greatly from learning what foods they are allergic too, how to avoid allergic triggers, what action to take if they have a severe allergic reaction, as well as from participation in new drug studies and treatment protocols. Parents, teachers, school nurses, primary care providers and the public in general will benefit from the education process.
Go to Asthma for additional information.
