Q&A: FARE Food Summit spotlights advocacy efforts, treatment advancements in food allergy
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Key takeaways:
- Robert Wood, MD, FAAAAI, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will give the keynote.
- A teen social will feature music, ice breakers and an allergen-safe buffet.
The Food Allergy Research & Education Food Summit will offer a plethora of sessions on the latest food allergy topics when it takes place from Oct. 18 to 20 in Washington, D.C.
The 3-day event at the Omni Shoreham Hotel will also feature advocacy workshops and teen-centered activities.
Healio spoke with Kelly Cleary, MD, senior director of education and support programs for Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE), about the summit and what the public can expect to see at this year’s event.
Healio: Could you give us an overview of the Food Allergy Summit? What’s to be expected?
The Food Allergy Summit is really the largest gathering of food out of the food allergy community within the year. Right now, we have over 700 people registered. We’ve got events that are spanning 4 days this year. We were able to pull off two pre-conferences, one that really focuses on food allergy and health equity and one that is convening groups from the NIH, the FDA, clinicians and thought leaders across the country to really tackle some of the issues within food allergy.
Friday evening is when our food allergy community comes in. We’re expecting over 100 teens with food allergies, young adults with food allergies, caregivers and health care professionals to really come and have a weekend of learning, a weekend of fun and building community.
such as role play for the teens so they can have an idea of how to handle some of those awkward social situations with food allergies.
What sets your conference apart from others? I see there is an advocacy aspect to it. Could you tell us more about that?
Cleary: Advocacy is a huge part of FARE. It’s one of our pillars, and all of our work circles around education, advocacy and research that’s rooted in health equity. Our advocacy team has so many sessions geared toward advocacy, such as self-advocacy and teaching teens to take the reins and start taking over their own medical care. If it’s advocacy in a legislative perspective, we are asking, what could you do on your state level? What could you do on a federal level? How can you start to impact change when you go home?
I’m proud because our closing session has our FARE leadership on the stage. They are going to talk about what attendees can do when they go home. Jason Linde, MA, our senior vice president of advocacy, will talk about going to your state representatives and what that may look like. How you can attend events — such as Courage at Congress, the largest gathering of food allergy advocates visiting Capitol Hill — that really get our message across to lawmakers. I think that that’s what we’re really hoping, that this weekend will ignite people to act, but also educate.
Healio: It seems that you are involving a younger audience in the summit and not just health care professionals. What does that look like?
The teens are the cornerstone of this event. This is a place where teens come, and for the first time in their lives, they are not the person who’s different. Everyone has food allergies, so they really get to experience this weekend of inclusivity and being able to kind of put food allergies aside.
, and we actually have ice breakers to get the kids to really interact and meet one another. Saturday night we have a teen silent disco. We work really hard to curate a safe and fun menu for our events that involve food. This is the first time that these kids could go up to a buffet that’s top nine allergen-free and gluten-free and actually have whatever they want.
What are some of the biggest themes that will be discussed? What are the topics that everyone’s most excited to talk about?
I would say if there’s a theme, it’s the word “summit.” Summit is the top or the highest, but for the food allergy community, we want this to be your beginning. What’s been amazing about 2024 for food allergy is that it’s been huge in innovation. We’ve had two FDA-approved treatments with omalizumab (Xolair; Genentech/Novartis) and neffy (ARS Pharmaceuticals). We haven’t had anything since Palforzia (Peanut [Archis hypogaea] Allergen Powder-dnfp, Stallergenes Greer). We know that our community is coming to D.C. and those are the questions they’re asking. What is omalizumab? What is neffy?
initiate that conversation with my provider? We are so fortunate to have Robert Wood, MD, FAAAAI, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the principal investigators for the OUtMATCH study, as our keynote speaker.
Are there any legislative initiatives that will be discussed?
At our Courage of Congress, we definitely have specific bills that we are supporting, and our advocacy team will be discussing some of them over the course of the weekend. This includes the ADINA Act, which is a bill on the federal level trying to make medications have ingredient lists and allergens listed in plain language. A bill was introduced by Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) to cap the price of epinephrine. There are some people out there that are still paying upwards of $600 for an autoinjector. These are families who may need to decide whether to buy extra food for the household or buy a lifesaving drug. We’re really looking to cap that at $60. We think that if the non-food allergy community can be educated on the risks, that would get everyone involved and keep our community safer.
Healio: Are there any other people that you would like to tell us about that you are excited to see at the conference?
Rima Rachid, MD, FAAAAI, director of the Allergen Immunotherapy Program and co-director of the Food Allergy Program at Boston Children's Hospital, a FARE Clinical Network Discovery Center, is giving a microbiomes talk. She will talk about how the microbiome and microbiota can be influential on the development of food allergy or the treatment of food allergy.
Pamela Guerrerio, MD, PhD, chief of allergic diseases and the food allergy research section at the NIH, will talk about the reason food allergies are on the rise, and Wayne Shreffler, MD, PhD, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and faculty member at Harvard Medical School, is going to give a talk on diagnostic breakthroughs. Diagnosing food allergies is still a really inelegant process. There’s a lot of innovation that’s needed there, so he’s going to walk us through some of the things that we can hope to expect.
We have Brian Vickery, MD, director of the Food Allergy Center at Emory + Children’s, coming to discuss oral immunotherapy and if it’s right for you.
We’ve got a great lineup of thought leaders and expert clinicians in the field. We’re also bringing in food allergy and disability lawyers. We really want people to leave the conference fired up and energized to do something for the food allergy community, but we also want them to leave with different tools so they can improve their everyday lives.
Healio: Do you have any other comments?
Cleary: One of the things that I always highlight is the meal and our consultant chef, Joel Schaefer, founder of Your Allergy Chefs, and a certified chef de cuisine with the American Culinary Federation. Chef Joel painstakingly goes through every single label. The food is so important in a food allergy community, and the food is what makes this conference great for them.