Grant: Project Grant

Food allergy affects over 3 million Canadians and 1 in 2 households. It costs the Canadian economy over $42 billion annually. With major changes in the food allergy evidence landscape and no formal Canadian food allergy guidelines, and the last North American guidelines being issued in 2014, patients and clinicians worldwide need trustworthy, updated guidelines to inform the optimal diagnosis and treatment of patients with food allergy. Optimal evidence summaries need to be up to date and can differentiate well-done studies producing valid results from poorly done studies that are likely to be misleading. To create trustworthy guidelines, we will produce evidence summaries of searches from many databases to detect all relevant food allergy trials, evaluate the design and conduct of the studies to poorly versus well-done ones, and combine all studies in a single analysis that allows patients and clinicians to compare all diagnostic and treatment options. These optimal evidence summaries inform trustworthy practice guidelines. We will create trustworthy guidelines by constituting a panel that includes experts in food allergy, clinicians and researchers, experts in assessing evidence, front-line clinicians treating food allergy, and patients and caregivers who have lived experience of food allergy. Panel members are free of conflict of interest. These recommendations are produced quickly and revised as researchers publish new data. We will work with the Canadian and American allergy societies and patient advocacy groups for the guideline and the most impactful allergy medical journals to publish the results online and as guidelines on their website. Finally, we will create implementation tools and educational summaries and videos to aid with knowledge uptake and mobilization.