FARE Blog

Not long ago, I received an email from a wonderful allergen-free food company: “We’re turning 18!” Then I felt old. Okay, maybe I’m only a year and a half older. But this is, pretty uniquely, an “Oh geez, I’m aging!” experience that only someone with food allergies would have.

This includes seven of the big eight (excluding wheat) along with many legumes and lentils in addition to sesame and mustard. As you can imagine, this really complicates my life. If I didn’t have these allergies, I’d eat wherever I want without worry.

When Mary Jane Marchisotto first joined the Food Allergy Initiative (FAI), she brought with her 30 years of experience in the financial services industry and little to no experience in food allergy. But while her knowledge of the space at the time was limited at the time of her joining FAI, she had an unbounded dedication to advancing research toward a cure for this potentially life-threatening disease.

An Independence Day guest post by Teen Advisory Group (TAG) member Zachary Brunet, who considers the meaning of independence in the context of growing up with food allergies. Zachary, age 16, is from Houston, TX. He is a junior in high school at Princeton International School of Mathematics and Science (PRISM) in Princeton, NJ.

FARE’s Community Outreach Award program empowers volunteers across the country to implement initiatives that educate others about the severity of food allergies, raising awareness of food allergies as a serious public health issue and create lasting change in their communities. Earlier this year, FARE awarded 24 community outreach awards totaling $62,625 to 24 food allergy leaders across the country, supporting volunteer-led activities that serve communities in 24 states.

Father’s Day is one of the most important days of the year, when we celebrate our strong, supportive fathers and all that they do for us daily, from working hard to put food on the table, to laughing, to inside jokes and games. And our dads are an integral counterpart to food allergy moms.

A pre-recorded June 5, 2019 FARE webinar, Taking Food Allergies to Camp, tackles the complexities and joys of creating safe, inclusive opportunities for children with food allergies to attend summer camp.

Are you looking to make a difference for food allergy patients and families, but not sure how to reach that goal? Check out FARE’s Volunteer Pathway to find links that can help you make an impact.

FARE thanks everyone who helped elevate public understanding of food allergy during Food Allergy Awareness Week and throughout the month of May. As we look back on the many ways in which our community raised food allergy awareness, we take pride in the creativity and commitment shared by advocates and allies on behalf of the 32 million Americans with food allergy and all those managing this serious, potentially life-threatening disease.

In a clinical correspondence published May 14 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, researchers at FARE and at Centers of Excellence in the FARE Clinical Network (FCN) report that, while most FARE Centers of Excellence have patients that would benefit from food-allergy-related mental health support services, Center of Excellence allergists are aware of few mental health professionals to whom they can refer their food allergy patients.