We at AllergyHome are honored and delighted to present this guest organization post from our friends at KFA (Kids With Food Allergies Foundation). This nonprofit charity has tirelessly worked to help keep children with food allergies safe and healthy. Thank you KFA and Lynda Mitchell for joining us and for all that you do! 

KFA (Kids With Food Allergies Foundation):Keeping Children With Food Allergies Safe and Healthy

KFA Beginnings

Just 15 years ago, there was little day-to-day support available to families raising children with food allergies. Families needed practical food allergy management strategies to keep their children safe and healthy. Kids With Food Allergies (KFA) incorporated as a nonprofit charity in 2005 to meet these needs.

KFA’s mission: We improve the day-to-day lives of families raising children with food allergies and empower them to create a safe and healthy future for their children.

Through the support of our donors and sponsors, KFA continues to grow. Everyone involved – from volunteers and staff to the members of our Medical Advisory Team and Board of Advisors – is touched by food allergy in some way or is passionate about our cause. Most, like our members, are parents of kids with food allergies. Some have food allergies themselves. Others provide care for food-allergic children as part of their medical practices. Regardless, we all take KFA’s mission to heart and live it every day because food allergy impacts so many families and is potentially life-threatening.

A focus on practical issues

Parents need to be able to keep their children with food allergies safe and healthy. KFA was founded because those of us raising children with food allergies know that this is often much easier said than done. We know from experience that managing food allergies can be overwhelming. It is a big adjustment that can have an adverse impact on the whole family’s quality of life.

This is why we raise funds to support programs that include practical management and day-do-day support. We want to help parents with both the “big picture” issues and the many details that these issues involve. We want families to not live in fear and to raise healthy, confident children who can learn to manage their own food allergies as they grow up.

We are dedicated to offering all tools, recipes and educational resources completely free of charge. We want those who need credible, valuable information to have access to it regardless of their financial means. We thank our donors, grantors and corporate partners for making this possible.

Three major KFA programming areas:

• Education – We cover everything parents need to know from cradle to sending their children off to college.

KFA’s medical advisors tackle a wide variety of medical topics in their blog posts or in webinars. We have many free resources available on our website – including a getting started guide. We also offer a library of articles, forms and handouts and videos about many aspects of food allergy management. You can also sign up for our twice monthly e-newsletters.

• Peer Support – We know that managing a child’s life-threatening food allergies can be isolating. Often times what parents want most is to be able to connect with others who are in the same situation. Our online support forums – staffed by parent volunteers – meet this need with peer-to-peer support, information sharing, and help with safe recipes, baking and cooking. We can also connect parents with local food allergy support groups.
• Food and Cooking – Whether they’re allergic to one food or a long list of foods, children with food allergies still need to eat. We offer cooking and grocery shopping resources, label reading information and our fabulous Safe Eats™ Recipe Collection. Safe Eats™ offers 1,200 recipes searchable by whatever allergens a child needs to avoid.

Expanding our services and capabilities

Last year was a pivotal year for KFA. With the help of our donors and sponsors, our programs expanded to include new offerings such as monthly educational webinars and blogs. Additionally, we began to focus on the specialized needs of vulnerable populations who are raising children with food allergies.

Even with these new programs in place, KFA faced a question vital to the future of our mission to save lives and improve the quality of life for children with food allergy. We asked ourselves: How do we create a KFA that will continue to grow and have greater outreach to keep the 6 million children in the U.S. with food allergy safe and healthy?

We answered that question with a merger with the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA). With this merger, KFA has now evolved from its humble beginnings to a division of AAFA that reaches 150,000 individuals each month.

KFA’s new status as a division of AAFA brings excitement and possibility, because it gives us the opportunity to do even more for families. What will not change through this merger is our mission and our focus on keeping children with food allergies safe and healthy until a cure for food allergy is found. Importantly, all donations to KFA continue to support KFA’s mission exclusively.

Coming soon from KFA

We are always looking for better ways to serve our families. To that end, we’re working on a complete redesign of our KidsWithFoodAllergies.org website. The site will have a fresh look and will be easy to navigate. It will put the resources parents need at their fingertips. The site will be mobile friendly for the many parents and others who access our site via mobile device. We can’t wait to show it to you! In the meantime, we welcome any feedback and suggestions you may have. As a nonprofit charity, we are here to serve your needs.

Lynda Mitchell is Vice President of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America’s Food Allergy Division. Lynda is the parent of a 24 year old son who has lived with food allergies since he was a baby. Prior to founding KFA, She had 25 years’ experience working in health care management and holds a master’s degree in health information management and informatics. She lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, with her husband, a retired naval officer and her Labrador Retriever.