Committee and group news

Food Allergy Specialist Group

Nurses in Allergy

Hannah Hunter

Specialist Dietitian in Allergy, Guy’s Hospital, London; BSACI Dietetic Representative

Lucy Common

Advanced Clinical Nurse Specialist (Salford); Past Chair of the Nurse in Allergy Committee

Our Food Allergy Specialist Group (FASG) of the BDA now has 436 dietitian members. We continue to share news, clinical queries and updates through the Basecamp platform. We have continued our programme of webinars with Isabel Skypala delivering one on oral allergy syndrome/ lipid transfer protein allergy and another by Hannah Hunter on anti-candida diets. On 3rd November 2021 we supported the Allergy Academy in running the online Food Allergy Study day. Our 30 diet sheets continue to be open access to all BDA dietitians and are regularly updated. We recently released a diet sheet to support dietary management of FPIES. We have also recently reviewed and updated the BDA Food Fact sheets on food allergy. We will shortly be surveying our membership about use of ‘ladders’ for allergen introduction.

As part of our group’s goal to improve RECENT ACTIVITIES:

• Online networking through Basecamp • Exciting programme of webinars and virtual events

• New online learning modules under development

education for allergy dietitians, we plan to pilot an online learning module in 2022. The first proposed topic will be “taking an allergy focussed diet history”. The module would be delivered live to up to 12 dietitians with less than 3 years’ experience in allergy. It will be set up and run by our group via the BDA.

Other topics we are considering developing modules are in Allergy Prevention and Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal disorders. .

Twitter: @BDA_FASG Website: www.bsaci.org/about-bsaci/bsacicouncil-and-executive/bsaci-subcommittees/ dietitian/

It was fantastic to see so many nurses attending the Nurses Open Meeting at the BSACI meeting in Harrogate. There were 32 nurses attending the meeting with four joining us on Zoom. We had the opportunity to discuss the work of the group over the last year including Zoom support meetings, updating the relevant content on the BSACI website and our Year of the Nurse survey. We also had the chance to catch up with colleagues we hadn’t seen for nearly two years. It gave us all a boost to make those valuable connections and share experiences with allergy nurses in our network after such a challenging time. We also gathered some feedback about what the BSACI nurse members wanted on the next joint WAO/BSACI conference in April 2022 in Edinburgh. We will take that forward to the scientific committee for the conference.

Thank-you to the nurses who have shown interest and applied for our vacant post on the nurses committee. We hope to appoint the newest member.

Hannah Kramer has now taken over as Chair of the Committee and will make an excellent leader, taking the work and activity of the group further over the next 2 years.

Our current e-mail address remains bsacinurses@gmail.com which will soon become nurses@bsaci.org to make our communications with the nurse and allied health members of BSACI even more accessible, centralised and responsive.

We also have an active Twitter account so please follow us for support and information #BSACInurses

www.bsaci.org/about-bsaci/bsaci-counciland-executive/bsaci-subcommittees/nursesin-allergy-group/

New BSACI Psychology Working Group

Dr Rebecca Knibb

Associate Professor in Health Psychology Aston University; Psychology Working Group Lead Psychologists make an important contribution to the multidisciplinary clinical care team for patients with allergies and their families. The number of psychologists working with allergy services in the UK is growing and there are many psychologists working in private practice, research, teaching and training, with an interest in asthma and allergy. This has been recognised by the formation of a new BSACI Psychology working group. The group is chaired by Dr Rebecca Knibb, a health psychologist with over 25 years’ experience working in this area. The group has seven further members from research and clinical practice, spanning paediatric and adult allergy.

The aim of the group is to promote the psychological care and well-being of patients with allergies and their families. The working group have set out key objectives to work towards over the next few years. We will promote awareness of the working group and the psychological impact of allergy, at key events such as the BSACI conference and by providing training days.

More information about the work we are doing will be available on the BSACI website soon.

Please take part in this survey to help understand more about the current level of provision of psychology services within the paediatric and adult allergy services across the UK for food allergy. For Psychologists https://forms.office.com/r/gW6UtKFicY For Clinicians https://forms.office.com/r/uZKhPJPNDe

This research is a collaboration between Exeter, London, Southampton and Newcastle and is linked to international research on psychological support required by allergy patients and families with food allergies which is being undertaken by the University of Aston under the aegis of Dr Rebecca Knibb.

Clinical Immunology Committee

Dr Tomaz Garcez

Consultant Immunologist, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust; Chair of the Clinical Immunology Committee The committee has aimed to not duplicate work in other committees in the BSACI or other allied professional organisation and Royal Colleges but is keen to focus on bringing Clinical Immunology and Allergy professional communities closer, ideally by more joint working. In line with the aims the committee requested a meeting between BSACI, UKPIN and BSI. This meeting has been deferred until UKPIN and BSI have completed their discussions on harmonisation.

It has been agreed that BSACI and the newly formed clinical immunology professional network within BSI will meet once the new group is formed. The committee is supporting a broad trainee led education sub group (with stakeholders at trainee level from all of the involved organisations) to look at the delivery of training across clinical immunology and allergy and to see if there are any gaps (or duplicated efforts)

The work:

•education and training across clinical immunology and allergy • development of new Terms of

Reference

•working towards re-constitution of the committee, ensuring appropriate representation and supporting education

that could be minimised by joint working.

The group has now met twice, including once at the BSACI 2021 congress.

In line with engagement with the clinical immunology scientific community the committee is inviting a clinical scientist to the next CIC meeting to discuss views on joint working, particularly in, but not limited to, the area of education. The intention then would be to go out to the membership with a request for expression of interest for a clinical scientist to join the CIC.

Paediatric Allergy Committee

Standards of Care Committee

Dr Paul Turner

Reader and Consultant in Paediatric Allergy and Immunology, Imperial College London The paediatric allergy virtual grand rounds continue to be a huge success with representation from health professionals across the UK. Previous grand rounds can be viewed at www.bsaci.org/education-andevents/paediatric-grand-round/. With the recommendation from the UK government as of September 2021 that all children age 12+ years are vaccinated against COVID-19, the BSACI has published vaccine advice for children with egg allergy and/or asthma with regards to the COVID-19 vaccine, but also influenza and MMR vaccines: www.bsaci.org/vaccinerecommendations-for-children/

An action plan for the management of FPIES reactions has been submitted to the Standards of Care Committee for review – once approved this will be published alongside the allergy action plans for children at risk of anaphylaxis.

BSACI membership consultation. Members are encouraged to look out for this as we would value feedback on this document. Also well into development is the guideline on Penicillin delabelling led by Louise Savic. This too hopefully will be ready for circulation for consultation. RECENT ACTIVITIES:

• Virtual grand rounds have been a huge success

• Updated vaccine information for children on BSACI website • FPIES action plan awaiting approval from BSACI Standards of Care Committee

Next steps for the committee include restarting the work suspended due to COVID-19 on PRAGMATicall (guidance for food challenges in children) and the development of national accreditation standards for Paediatric Allergy Services together with RCPCH.

I have now stepped down as chair and my thanks go to Kate Swan for all her support as secretary and Marie Gibbs for all her support during my tenure. I now leave the committee in the very capable hands of Nick Makwana and I wish him the best, as well as Tom Marrs, who has taken the position of Secretary.

Proposed guidelines in the early stages of preparation are a revision of the Urticaria guideline and a new guideline of Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug hypersensitivity; to be led respectively by Chris Rutkowski and Rita Mirakian. We hope soon to decide on working group members and review the PICO questions before the real work begins.

Calls for expressions of interest in these respective working groups have already been circulated in the society.

Dr David Luyt

Consultant in Paediatric Allergy Leicester General Hospital; Chair of the Standards of Care Committee Two further guidelines are now completed, two are in progress and two are currently planned. The egg allergy guideline led by Sue Leech was published in CEA in October. The Primary Care Adrenaline autoinjector (AAI) prescription guideline for anaphylaxis in adults and children led by Liz Angier and Deepa Choudhury is nearing completion. Colleagues who attended the annual conference in Harrogate had the opportunity to hear Liz present the guideline to the delegates. The Pollen Food Syndrome guidelines led by Isabel Skypala is nearing completion and will soon be ready to be sent out for RECENT ACTIVITIES:

• Two further guidelines complete • Egg allergy guideline published in

October • AAI prescription guideline nears completion

www.bsaci.org/about-bsaci/bsaci-counciland-executive/bsaci-subcommittees/ standards-of-care-com