Kids Food Allergies Blog

From time to time, I would like to recognize and celebrate individuals and organizations in the food allergy community whose hard work and advocacy make the world a safer and better place for our children.

In this spirit, I would like to recognize Maria Acebal, the founder of Safe@School Partners.  I admire Maria tremendously, because she taken the passion and specialized knowledge that only a food allergy parent can acquire and harnessed it to help all food allergic children by teaching schools, camps, and daycares how to manage food allergies in their respective environments.

Today’s post, conducted in interview format, is an introduction to Maria Acebal and Safe@School Partners.  This post will continue in two additional parts next week where Maria will address questions on managing multiple food allergies in the school setting and offer guidance on how to work with schools and families of your child’s classmates to keep your child safe.   She will also address local and national standards for food allergy management in the schools.  I hope this is useful as you start to meet with your children’s teachers, principals, and nursing staff in the weeks ahead.  Also, if you haven’t yet had your initial meeting with the school team, you may want to check out the Safe@School Partners Food Allergy Discussion Guide.  I found it really helpful to structure my thoughts.

So, without further delay … here is an introduction to Maria Acebal.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and the work of Safe@School Partners.  Why did you found it?     

My older daughter, Nina (age 6), is anaphylactic to peanuts.  As your readers know too well, that means that she can have a life-threatening allergic reaction if she ingests even a trace amount of peanut protein.  For many food allergy families, keeping kids safe at school is one of the most difficult and stressful challenges we face.  For teachers and schools as well, it is sometimes hard to know how best to manage students’ food allergies.  I wanted to find a way to make it easier for everyone:  the teachers, the administrators, the kids, and the parents.  The missing link, it seemed to me, was a standardized curriculum and training program for all school personnel.  I set out to create the service I wished I had had access to when I was enrolling my daughter in preschool and then later in kindergarten.  How different my meetings with her teachers would’ve gone if they had said at the onset “The school provides us with annual training on (a) how to reduce the risk of allergen exposure; (b) how to recognize the symptoms of an allergic reaction; and (c) what to do in case of a medical emergency”!  I would have walked out with a level of confidence in my child’s safety that unfortunately often takes years to achieve when we work individually, each parent having to educate on an ad-hoc basis new teachers and administrators, year in and year out.

You asked about my background.  It is quite unusual and circuitous given the work I am doing now!  I am an attorney.  I practiced law for five years before joining a business consulting firm and turning my focus to strategic business analysis.  Now I’ve left both the legal and the business world for the non profit sector, though I find I draw on both experiences often in running Safe@School Partners, Inc.

What are some of the critical components of the training program you provide for schools, camps, and daycares?  How has the state of awareness/readiness changed among school administrators and teachers since Safe@School Partners was founded?

I created the training curriculum – the FoodAllergy Smart™ Training Program — with educators’ needs in mind and in accordance with three guiding principals:

The information must be targeted and actionable:  it is critical to separate the “must know” from the merely “interesting to know” and, for each and every fact conveyed, a corresponding action step should be made clear.  Educators have a million and one things to think about in addition to food allergies in the classroom:  training is most effective when you’ve answered ahead of time “how is each and every statement I make relevant to an educator in fulfilling his or her day-to-day responsibilities?”

The style and tone are as important as the content.   A live presenter that is engaging and approachable makes the information easier to absorb and retain as opposed to solely reading information in handouts or manuals.  In addition, the tone must reinforce that the purpose is to educate and impart confidence, not to scare.

Follow-up increases impact.  Having a resource to call on for additional guidance after the initial training increases the likelihood of lasting impact.

All presentations are structured around the four “CARE™” topics:  “C” – Comprehending the six “must know” medical facts; “A” – Avoiding the food allergen; “R” – Recognizing a reaction; and “E” – Enacting Emergency protocol.

With respect to the response to our FoodAllergy Smart™ trainings, the best way to express it is probably to share just a few of the comments we’ve received from the now over 1,000 educators that have participated:

How do the risks in the camp environment compare with those in the day care or school environments?  Are there any transferable lessons from one environment to another? Are there any unique challenges that food allergic parents should think about for the summer?

The risks are very comparable from one setting to another in that in camp, school and daycare, you have adults with varying degrees of “food allergy smarts” caring for many children in an environment that contains allergen-exposure risk.  Camps can pose a heightened challenge, however, because often staff members are teens versus adults and the level of supervision and control is more relaxed as compared to the school year, particularly when the setting is an outdoor campsite.   Parents should pay close attention to how accessible epinephrine is to their child throughout the camp day as well as to how well trained all staff members are who are supervising their child.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 7:16 am and is filed under Maria Acebal, food allergies, food allergy heroes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.