Students advocate for food allergy awareness and education through CAFAE

During her freshman year, now-Weinberg senior Julia Auerbach was at Bob’s Pizza in Evanston when she witnessed someone go into anaphylactic shock. Her friends didn’t know how to use an EpiPen, so Auerbach used her own to help. 

“That was a moment where my jaw was to the floor, just looking around seeing almost the inability of my peers to act in what I thought was a pretty commonplace scenario,” Auerbach said.

This experience only added to Auerbach’s commitment to food allergy education, a cause she has long been passionate about. 

Auerbach and Weinberg senior Kethan Bajaj are co-presidents of College Advocates for Food Allergy Awareness and Education, a club dedicated to providing food allergy education and support to college students. 

The club was born out of a project that Auerbach and Bajaj worked on during an internship at Northwestern’s Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research. The project aimed to improve students’ experiences with food allergies and food-mediated conditions on college campuses.

Bajaj and Auerbach surveyed students to identify gaps and deficiencies, then used the results to create resources like a food allergy toolkit, an allergen-awareness video and the club itself. 

“There’s a lot of aspects of college which are affected by food allergies, which are not often talked about,” Bajaj said. “These (are) social, emotional impacts as well as physical impacts we want to address and we hope to do that through events where we teach about food allergy education and, overall, increase awareness.”

One of the many ways CAFAE promotes food allergy education is through awareness tables set up at locations on campus like Norris University Center and the NU Technological Institute. These tables provide resources such as pamphlets on how to recognize anaphylaxis, the food allergy toolkit and trainer EpiPens, which contain no needle but are used to practice saving someone’s life. 

Auerbach emphasized the importance of the club not only for people with food allergies but also for their friends and the entire campus community, noting that they play a crucial role in creating a safe environment for everyone. She added that the club was also created to support individuals with food-mediated conditions, such as IgE-mediated food allergies, celiac disease or lactose intolerance, acknowledging that CAFAE is meant to be an inclusive community for all.

“Doing broader events helps us engage the entire campus community, which truly are as important, if not more important, than those actually with the condition in improving awareness and accommodation on campus,” Auerbach said.

Weinberg junior and executive member of CAFAE Preena Shroff said CAFAE is also advocating for the availability of undesignated stock epinephrine in dining halls at NU. She noted that while the University has implemented measures to protect students with food allergies, such as meal labeling and cross-contact precautions, there are still occasions when food may be mislabeled or accidental cross-contact may occur.

In these cases, Shroff emphasized that a backup supply of epinephrine could be crucial and may help prevent life-threatening reactions.

“Even if all preventative measures are taken, in the case that one thing goes wrong, just having a backup epinephrine right there at the site of an allergic emergency can help students feel safer and prevent delayed epinephrine administration,” Shroff said.

Shroff added that she has spoken with a dietitian and Compass Group in Fall Quarter about the importance of having epinephrine on hand, but CAFAE is still working on getting it implemented. 

Another priority that CAFAE is focusing on is reaching out to other colleges and encouraging them to start chapters, Bajaj said.

Auerbach shared her personal connection to bringing food allergy awareness to college campuses, explaining that she was diagnosed with celiac disease as a child. Now, she wants to help others navigate college the same way she did. 

“I would love to be able to use what I’ve learned and help other people improve their experience and think about the mistakes that I’ve made, and how maybe (the) next person doesn’t have to make them,” Auerbach said.

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