Advocate for food allergy awareness

www.foodallergywalk.org

I have lamely posted this thing without any information despite the fact that it’s one of my most desired dreams. I think it’s time I get real about doing the work that I came here to do.

I have 2 peanut-allergic kids. I have a very mild allergy to peanuts myself. My son was severely allergic from about age 1 to 6, and in recent years has become less sensitive. My daughter is mildly allergic.

I ate a lot of peanut butter when I was pregnant and breastfeeding my son. I also participated in the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC http://www.wicworks.ca.gov/) program during that time. WIC provides vouchers for low income mothers to buy certain grocery items with. For protein choices, WIC supplies vouchers to buy dry beans and peanut butter. I rarely bought the dry beans. Who’s going to cook those regularly? I bought the peanut butter. And I don’t eat red meat, so I ate peanut butter almost every day.

I discovered my son’s allergy when he was 1 year old. It was awful. Nearly an anaphylactic reaction. I’ve created health plans for him to be safe in school, wrote his first 504 plan (now there are great templates like this: http://foodallergyinitiative.org/section_home.cfm?section_id=4&sub_section_id=4&article_id=35), and one year, because he rode the school bus, had all the bus drivers in the school district trained on how to use an Epi Pen.

I strongly believe that WIC has a responsibility to educate mothers about the risks associated with consuming peanut butter while pregnant and breastfeeding. It goes like this: someone with a history of allergies (food or other) has a higher likelihood of having a child with allergies; peanut protein is especially difficult to digest and CAN in some cases be passed to the unborn or nursing child, and in SOME of those cases, the baby will be predisposed to a peanut allergy; when this happens, they are being sensitized to the peanut protein thereby causing their immune systems to react to this allergen at a horribly early age, which is what may lead to more severe cases of food allergy. This is what happened to my son, in my opinion.

I’d written about this on several occasions when I was in school a few years ago, and even went out of my way to interview WIC staff in my area and WIC Association staff as well. I interviewed the WIC Assn. Staff about topics other than their role in allergy education. That was 3 years ago.

This year, in my network of other food-allergic parents, I came across someone from the WIC association who was putting a workshop together on food allergies at a Statewide conference. And she needed speakers. It was the same woman I had interviewed 3 years ago. An amazing opportunity fell in my lap. We both realized we had met previously. It was incredible. I ended up presenting to about 200 WIC agency staff from all over CA alongside an FDA rep and another mom of a peanut allergic child. Only I got to tell them my story, and how I was once on their program. There was a lot of interest in where I was leading them to consider their role in educating mothers about food allergies. That was 3 months ago.

I’ve since pondered getting a physician on board to work with me on a campaign. I have a fantastic contact at the Association, so a super strong activist approach would burn this great connection. I actually wrote to one local allergist who I had heard generally has an interest in allergy awareness issues. But it was via his web site, and either he never got my letter, or wasn’t interested.

There’s more… I’ve just had enough of writing at the moment.