Personalised video to include children with food allergies

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The Allergy Team is a digital health and training platform supporting families living with food allergies. Visitors to theallergyteam.com have access to webinars with top healthcare professionals, medically verified information, first-class recipes and unrivalled peer-to-peer support.Living with serious food allergy is life-changing, frightening and isolating. Founder, Sarah Knight, knows: her sons have severe food allergies. She's watched them suffer life-threatening reactions and experienced discrimination when refused childcare and service in restaurants. When she looked for information and support, it was woefully lacking - so she founded The Allergy Team._ME AND MY ALLERGY_ is the organisation's latest innovation to reduce discrimination against children living with food allergy and to improve understanding of the condition which will help keep them safe. It's an innovative personalised video project which enables carers to share details of their child's allergies in an accessible, engaging way, so key safety messages stick. Think Elf Yourself for allergies! Similar personalisation technology in this festive gimmick can be used for a more serious and potentially life-saving solution.80% of allergy parents face significant worry and 42% of these meet the clinical cut-off for post-traumatic stress (University of East Anglia study, Journal of Paediatric Psychology 2021). The struggle is compounded by poverty, language barriers and social isolation. Children with food allergies are twice as likely to be bullied as those without - our project promotes inclusion through understanding and aims to support carers over-burdened with a caring responsibility they might not trust others to share.Innovate UK funding will allow The Allergy Team to work with developers to create a first iteration of Me and My Allergy, re-purposing content in a personalised way that can be shared with others. We will send out our first videos and test their efficacy using survey feedback.2.6million people in the UK (Source: Food Standards Agency) and 17 million in Europe live with a diagnosed food allergy and these numbers are growing. Allergic disease costs the NHS over £1billion/year (Source: BSACI) and admissions to hospital with severe food allergies have increased 72% between 2014 and 2019 (Source: NHS Digital). BAME populations and those on low incomes are disproportionately affected by food allergies. Our aim is to confront this unmet need and to support an often-neglected community. And for us, it's personal and our solution is too.