8 foods cause 90% of food allergies (click to enlarge the image). The likelihood of a negative oral food challenge is shown in relation to the respective values of skin prick test (SPT) and serum IgE (sIgE):
The materials for the online curriculum were developed through focus groups and expert review. The curriculum was offered to 60 parents of newly referred children with a allergy diagnosis and an epinephrine autoinjector ("EpiPen").
The correct number of autoinjector activation steps increased from 3.4 to 5.95 after training (maximum level was 6). The number was still high at 5.47 at 1 year follow-up, which was impressive.
The mean score for comfort with using the autoinjector (7-point Likert scale) before the curriculum was 4.63 (somewhat comfortable) and increased to 6.23 after the intervention. It remained elevated at 1 year (6.03) (straight-forward, organized, interesting, relevant, and recommend to others).
The annualized rate of allergic reactions fell from 1.77 the year prior, to 0.42 after the program.
The authors concluded that the food allergy educational curriculum for parents, available online at no cost, showed high levels of satisfaction and efficacy.
If you know the URL of the online project, please submit in the comments below. Update 04/06/2012: This seems to be the website in question, it looks quite simplistic: http://www.cofargroup.org
References:
Development and Validation of Educational Materials for Food Allergy. Sicherer SH, Vargas PA, Groetch ME, Christie L, Carlisle SK, Noone S, Jones SM. J Pediatr. 2011 Nov 12.
Food Allergy
Educational videos about food allergy improve knowledge of caregivers of children with food allergy (study) http://buff.ly/1mpqUOq
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