FAAN Walk for Food Allergy: Moving Toward A Cure in Tampa Names Honorary Chair

Oct. 6, 2009 - PRLog -- This year’s Walk for Food Allergy: Moving Toward A Cure in Tampa will take place in Lowry Park at Lowry Park Zoo on Saturday, November 14th, at 9:00 a.m.

The event, to be held in 35 cities across the country as well as online, is sponsored by the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) to increase awareness about food allergy and to raise money for research and education.

The Tampa FAAN Walk committee is pleased to announce our Honorary Chair for this event. Kristy Kiernan, well-known author, will be leading the walk festivities. One of Ms. Kiernan’s books, Matters of Faith, brings a character to life that suffers with severe food allergies. Matters of Faith was an IndieNext Notable Selection and won a bronze medal in the Florida Book Awards.

When asked why Ms. Kiernan wanted to be involved with this FAAN fundraiser, she said, “In researching Matters of Faith, what stunned me was not how devastating food allergies could be to a family, but how little the general public understood the challenges parents face on a daily basis simply keeping their child safe, how just allowing a child to go to school could be a possible minefield and how exhausting it must be to have to explain, over and over, that something as innocuous as peanut butter or an egg could be fatal”.

Sponsors are also being sought; the Walk is a great way for businesses to show their support for families facing the challenges of managing food allergies. To go directly to the local website for the Tampa walk, go to http://www.foodallergywalk.org/tampa_fl

More than 12 million Americans have food allergy, which is the leading cause of anaphylaxis (a severe and potentially fatal allergic reaction) outside the hospital setting and results in more than 30,000 emergency room visits each year. Eight foods account for 90 percent of all allergic reactions in the U.S.: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts (walnuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, pecans, etc.), wheat, soy, fish, and shellfish. Food allergy afflicts one in 25 Americans overall, and one in 17 under age 3.


ABOUT FAAN
Founded in 1991, the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) is the world leader in information about food allergy, a potentially fatal condition that afflicts about 12 million Americans, or one out of every 25. A nonprofit organization based in Fairfax, Va., FAAN has 30,000 members in the U.S., Canada, and 62 other countries. It is dedicated to increasing public awareness of food allergy and its consequences, to educating people about the condition, and to advancing research on behalf of all those affected by it. FAAN provides information and educational resources about food allergy to patients, their families, schools, health professionals, pharmaceutical companies, the food industry, and government officials.
For more information, please visit FAAN at http://www.foodallergy.org, http://www.faankids.org, and http://www.faanteen.org