Food Allergy Awareness - The Food Allergy Program at Cincinnati Children’s
The Food Allergy Program Team with Drs Amal Assa’ad and Kimberly Risma wearing Teal for Food Allergy Awareness. Food Allergy Awareness week starts May 14, 2023.
The goal of the Food Allergy Program at Cincinnati Children’s is to improve the lives of patients with food allergies and their family members by providing expert care, innovative treatments and cutting-edge research. Patients in the Food Allergy Program are seen through the Allergy Clinic and Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) Standardization Clinics. OIT is offered at Kentucky, Liberty, Main campus, and several of our neighborhood locations. A recent Young and Healthy Podcast on the topic Food Allergies: Oral Immunotherapy Treatment, Teal Pumpkin Project, and more can be found HERE
Why OIT?
It is a treatment that enables children to desensitize to a food that they are allergic to. The first visit will be a consultation to discuss the treatment. Then the patient will return for one appointment to find a safe starting dose. The patient will return every 2 to 4 weeks for approximately 13 visits to establish a maintenance dose that they will take every day.
Currently, we have a referral system for OIT treatment, and if you think your patient is a candidate for OIT, please refer for an allergy visit. Once a consultation has occurred and the family as well as the provider deem OIT is an appropriate management of the food allergy, we expect there would be no wait to start the treatment.