VIDEO: Allergy, asthma advocacy organizations outline goals for 2025
Key takeaways:
- Food Allergy Research & Education aims to focus on food allergy prevention and early allergen introduction.
- Allergy & Asthma Network highlighted its trusted messengers’ program.
BOSTON — The American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Scientific Meeting took place in Boston in October this year with hundreds of researchers, advocates and organizations attending.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Advancing Allergy/Immunology Discovery.” Many sessions included topics on new therapies for allergic conditions and how to implement them in practice.
However, alongside presenting new advancements in care, advocacy organizations also showed up to bring light to asthma and allergy issues and what resources are available to both patients and practitioners.
Healio spoke with FARE, or the Food Allergy Research & Education organization, as well as the Allergy and Asthma Network (AAN), about what their goals are for the next year.
“So, the goal for FARE at the conference is to make sure that clinicians that are working with people with food allergies understand all the resources that FARE has to support them,” Paul Scribner, MSW, vice president of education and support programs at FARE, said. “We’ve got a number of different special initiatives that we do including food allergy prevention through early allergen introduction and through promoting the latest research and evidence. We’ve got a food allergy safe schools initiative which is growing right now, and we’ve been doing a lot of work with the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics. We just did an update to the voluntary guidelines for food allergies in schools.”
Scribner also noted that FARE just received a 3-year grant from the CDC in order to create an indicators report and to start promoting awareness of best practices for clinicians in primary care so they can better diagnose and refer patients to specialists.
“We have three main websites. Foodallergy.org is our main resource. We also have foodallergyacademy.org. That’s all kinds of videos, programs and interactive programs. We also have foodallergyprevention.org, which is the early allergen introduction resources.”
Healio also spoke with Bethany Burkhart, DHA, MS, MCHES, the director of operations for the Allergy and Asthma Network, who said that one of their main goals is to continue educating health care professionals.
“We’re really looking forward to the year ahead to our new programs and our new projects,” Burkhart said. “We’re really looking forward to being here next year and growing as a team and an organization. We have our Trusted Messenger program, and we just want to make sure that everyone feels supported in their allergy and asthma journey.”
The next American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Scientific Meeting will take place on Nov. 6 to 10, 2025, in Orlando.