During the 2012-2013 school year, 38 Chicago Public School
(CPS) students and staff were given emergency medication for potentially
life-threatening allergic reactions. This finding is detailed in a new Northwestern
Medicine® report in partnership with CPS.
Following national and local legislation, CPS was the first
large, urban school district in the nation to develop and implement an
initiative to supply all public and charter schools in Chicago with epinephrine
auto-injectors (EAIs) -- medical devices used to treat acute allergic
reactions.
The impact during the initiative’s first year, the 2012-2013
school year, underscores the need for stocking undesignated epinephrine in
schools across the country, according to the report.
“Currently, there is no treatment or cure for food allergy,”
said Ruchi Gupta, M.D., Northwestern Medicine® pediatrician and the
corresponding author of the report. “Timely administration of an EAI is a
child’s first and primary line of defense in the event of anaphylaxis resulting
from allergic reaction.”
Gupta is an associate professor of pediatrics at
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Ann
& Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
Anaphylaxis, a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic
reaction, can occur within seconds or minutes of exposure to an allergen.
Since last year, 41 states passed policies encouraging
schools to stock undesignated epinephrine auto-injectors in their schools for a
possible anaphylactic emergency.
The report will be published Oct. 20 in the American Journal
of Preventive Medicine, and Gupta will present the findings at the American
College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Annual Scientific Meeting, to be held
Nov. 6 to 10 in Atlanta.
Other highlights from the report:
The majority of those receiving an EAI were students (92
percent)
More than half didn’t know they had an allergy (55 percent)
Twenty-one of the EAIs given were to treat food induced
allergic reactions
Among food-induced reactions, peanut was the most common
followed by fin fish
The trigger of more than a third of all reactions are
unknown
Elementary schools had the most cases of EAIs administered
School nurses administered the medication the majority of
the time
“At CPS, it is our goal to prevent any health-related
barriers to learning, which is why we have worked with all of our schools to
address this critical issue by equipping them with tools and guidance that they
need to keep students safe and healthy,” said Stephanie A. Whyte, M.D., study
coauthor and chief health officer of CPS.
The district-issued medication is available at all CPS
schools and is to be used when a person is having a severe allergic reaction
and his/her own epinephrine is unavailable or if he/she has no history of
allergic reactions.
“Because of the amount of time kids spend in school, and
given the fact that many first-time allergic reactions occur on school grounds,
it is imperative for school districts across the country to provide access to
emergency epinephrine to students who may not otherwise have access to the
potentially life-saving medication,” Gupta said.
Most district-issued EAIs were administered on the city’s
north-northwest side where the rate of food allergy has been found to be
higher, the report found. However, a large number of these EAIs were used on
the far south side, too -- an area of the city with a low reported rate of food
allergy. This highlights the need for access to district-issued EAIs citywide,
as children on the far south side may not have access to food allergy diagnosis
and could experience their first allergic reaction at school.
“This is definitely a national issue in schools around the
country,” Gupta said. “We think the situation in Chicago schools is
representative of schools everywhere. Most states now have policies in place
for stocking epinephrine in schools. This is an essential step to keep kids
with food allergies safe
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