Hosted by Food Allergy Specialist Group
An introduction for Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) for dietitians in allergy management.
Sessions include:-
- Current UK management of OIT with Professor Adam Fox, Professor of Paediatric Allergy and Consultant Paediatric Allergist at Evelina London Children's Hospital.
Summary of talk - An overview and current management of OIT in the UK with the most up to date research.
About Adam - Adam read Medicine at Cambridge University and is currently Professor of Paediatric Allergy and Consultant Paediatric Allergist at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. He was a founding Director of the KCL Allergy Academy, a postgraduate educational programme, which was a finalist at the BMJ Awards in 2018.
Adam was elected as President of the British Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the first Paediatrician to hold this position, from October 2018 until 2021, after which he took over the role of Chair of the National Allergy Strategy Group from July 2022. As part of this, he jointly chairs the Expert Advisory Group for Allergy with the Department of Health and Social Care and leads the 2025-35 National Allergy Strategy.
Adam was awarded ‘Paediatric Allergist of the Year’ from Allergy UK in 2007. His doctoral thesis on peanut allergy received the Raymond Horton Smith prize from Cambridge University in 2012 and he was included in The Times ‘Britain’s 100 Best Children’s Doctors’. Adam received the William Frankland Award for Outstanding contribution to Allergy in 2015 and a Department of Health National Clinical Excellence award from 2016 and 2020. In 2024, Adam was the second person to receive the BSACI Fellows Award in recognition of outstanding contribution to clinical allergy. In 2025, Adam was awarded an OBE for services to Paediatric Allergy as part of the King’s Birthday Honours list.
Together with Profs Gideon Lack and George Du Toit, he established The Allergy Centre of Excellence to offer cutting edge diagnostics and treatments not otherwise available in the UK. Initially, this was operated at Great Ormond St Hospital and in 2021, having initiated the first patient in the world, outside of the US, on Palforzia (the first licenced food allergy desensitisation product) it became Europe’s leading provider of this treatment. Following successful introduction of oral immunotherapy for numerous other food allergies, the centre has just moved to its new premises, at 10 Duchess Street, in London’s prestigious Harley Street Medical District, becoming the UK’s first dedicated private allergy hospital.
- Dietetic management of OIT in UK with Karen Wright, Allergy Research Dietitian at Southampton University; Mary Feeney, Allergy Research Dietitian at Kings College London, Justine Dempsey, Clinical Lead Paediatric Allergy Dietitian at Imperial and Rosalynd Gourgey, Paediatric Allergy Dietitian at Royal London Hospital.
Summary of talk - Karen, Mary, Justine and Rosalynd will cover practical considerations for dietitians when undertaking OIT in children.
About Karen - Karen is a state registered dietitian based in London providing online consultations. She has a special interest in Food Allergy and has completed the Masters Degree in Allergy at the University of Southampton. Karen has been seeing patients with Food Allergy in the UK, Singapore and South East Asia since 2005.
About Mary - Mary Feeney is a paediatric allergy dietitian. She has worked at King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust since 2009 on food allergy research trials, including the ground breaking LEAP study. She is a research officer for the BDA Food Allergy Specialist Group and was chair of the group between 2018-2022. In 2024, she commenced a PhD part-time at the Centre for Applied Excellence in Skin and Allergy Research (CAESAR) at the University of Bristol on the topic of dietary assessment in food allergy. She also provides dietetic support for children with food allergy, including oral immunotherapy in private practice.
About Justine - Justine completed her MSc in Allergy at Imperial in 2022. She was a Co-Chair of the Food Allergy Group between 2022-2025. She is currently undertaking a Pre-Doctoral fellowship in the Children's Clinical Research Facility at Imperial working with children undertaking milk OIT.
About Rosalynd - Rosalynd is a highly experienced paediatric allergy dietitian at the Royal London Hospital (RLH), Barts Health Trust, where she has been an integral member of the children’s allergy team for over a decade. She specialises in the diagnosis and dietary management of infants and children with complex and multiple food allergies, and has a particular interest in food immunotherapy.
Rosalynd has co-developed the milk oral immunotherapy service at RLH, in collaboration with Dr Sim. Working in partnership with Imperial College, she helped design a protocol tailored to the needs of the local population, with the first cohort commencing treatment in April 2024. She also contributes to multidisciplinary team discussions for the peanut immunotherapy service at RLH, the first NHS site to deliver Palforzia.
Nationally, she is the dietetic representative on the BSACI Registry for Immunotherapy (BRIT), contributing particularly to the analysis of the peanut immunotherapy domain and supporting the registry’s expansion to include other forms of food immunotherapy.
At RLH, she also leads on audit and quality improvement for children’s acute therapies, including pioneering adaptations of home-monitoring technology for use in milk immunotherapy.
Rosalynd’s earlier career includes working as the research dietitian on the Pronut study at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, which deepened her insight into the challenges patients face when incorporating safe nuts while avoiding allergens. Her commitment to translating research into practice has been recognised through the BSACI Allied Health Professionals Barry Kay Prize, awarded to her in both 2016 and 2020, particularly for her work on implementing the LEAP study in East London. She also served as Deputy Chair of the BDA Food Allergy Specialist Group from 2016 to 2022.
- Adult OIT review of literature with Hannah Hunter, Adult OIT at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospital.
Summary of talk - Hannah will cover a review of literature and current management.
About Hannah - Hannah completed her Dietetics degree at King’s College London in 2008 and MSc Allergy at Imperial in 2017. In her role in Adult Allergy at Guys she splits her time between clinical practice and research. She was co-investigator and lead author of the recently published Grown Up Peanut Immunotherapy (GUPI) study, the first trial of peanut OIT in an exclusively adult population.
- Parental perspective of OIT with Danielle Phillips, Paediatric Dietitian at Luton and Dunstable Hospital.
Summary of talk - Danielle will talk about the initial dosing and the practical day to day management of OIT from a parental perspective.
About Danielle - Danielle completed her Nutrition and Dietetic Degree at the University of Coventry in 2009. Her current role is a Paediatric Dietitian at Luton and Dunstable Hospital specialising in allergy and gastroenterology. Her oldest child is 6 years old and has multiple IgE mediated food allergies. After a scary anaphylactic reaction to hummus at 7 months and a confirmed diagnosis of a sesame seed allergy, he started sesame OIT when he was 3.5 years old.
Cost
- Food Allergy Specialist Group Member £10
- Food Allergy Specialist Group Student Member Free
- BDA Member £20
- Non Member £50 (HCP only)
Admin Code SLA
