Aliya (left) and Whitney pack their lunches before school. Melissa Tussing/MNS
WASHINGTON – Aliya and Whitney are two of 3 million children in America who have food allergies. Eleven states including Maryland provide schools with guidelines for how to manage food allergies and anaphylaxis.
Now, a bill in the Senate would direct Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to develop voluntary guidelines for the nation’s schools and early childhood programs.
Under the guidelines, parents would have an obligation to provide schools and early childhood centers with specific documentation on what their child is allergic to and what medicines can be given if there’s a risk of anaphylaxis.
The guidelines would also suggest creating individual plans for food allergy management tailored to students’ needs. Each plan would include directions about how to manage the risk when the student goes on a field trip or is involved in before- or after-school programs.
Under the plan, Sebelius would be able to award grants to help pay for alternative meals for students with food allergies and allergen-free wipes to clean the classroom.
The bill, packaged with the FDA Food Modernization act and reported out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in November, is expected to come to the Senate floor soon. It is already garnering support from advocacy groups such as the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network in Fairfax, Va.
Providing guidelines at a national level would help schools be consistent in how to manage the risk, said Christopher Weiss, vice president of advocacy and government relations for the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.
“If you look at the country right now, there’s very little consistency from state to state and even within the state, say from town to town, city to city or even school to school within a town,” Weiss said.
It’s a problem for parents who don’t know what to expect from their schools, he said.
One of Whitney’s classmates eats a piece of fruit during snack time. Melissa Tussing/MNS
“Parents have to do a lot of homework beforehand,” Weiss said. “They have to meet with people before school starts to get a sense of how schools actually manage food allergies.”
Maryland’s guidelines were most recently updated in 2009. Donna Mazyck, the state school nurse consultant at the Maryland State Department of Education, said the guidelines are put together with advice for experts in the field and reflect current laws and science on the subject.
They include a checklist for the school nurse, a definition of the symptoms of food allergies and even step-by-step instructions on how to give someone a shot of epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. The guidelines are updated every five to seven years.
But the child’s parents still bear most of the responsibility, Weiss said. And that includes making sure the art teacher doesn’t use milk cartons or peanut butter for a class project.
Elise said her daughters’ teachers are willing to work with her, but she always has to be on her guard.
“There was a project at the beginning of the year where they were using all sorts of recycled things,” Elise said. “And I e-mailed the art teacher and said, ‘I’m sending a stack of stuff with Aliya. She can only use this stack.'”
Deborah Stapleton, Whitney and Aliya’s school nurse, said her office holds medication for 30 of the school’s 500 students. She estimates 70 of the students have food allergy concerns.
At the beginning of the year, parents indicate if their child has food allergies, and the school create a health care plan if the child is exposed to what he or she is allergic to.
“We have EpiPens in place, Benadryl, whatever need to be there for that child to be safe in school,” Stapleton said.
Stapleton said although the school follows state guidelines, she believes national guidelines would help districts who haven’t encountered students with severe food allergies yet.
Elise said the guidelines would allow parents like her to focus more on their children’s education and worry less about their allergies.
“For the parent to easily let their child go and be in a school where they know the school knows what it’s doing, it takes out the stress and anxiety,” Elise said. “They can just lovingly let their children go to school and let their children do what children should do.”