Ep. 291: Exploring College with Food Allergies

College tours are exciting—but for families managing food allergies, one question can shape every decision: Will my student be able to live and eat safely here? In this special solo episode, FAACT's Roundtable host and Vice President of Community Relations, Caroline Moassessi, shares the essential questions to ask, the conversations to have, and the planning that can help your student find a college where they can live, learn, and thrive with confidence. 

Resources to keep you in the know:

• FAACT's College Resource Center
• FAACT's Private Facebook group for Parents/Caregivers of High School and College Students with Food Allergies
• For Parents/Caregivers: College Checklists
• For Students: College Checklists
• Legal Considerations (College)

FAACT's Roundtable Podcasts:

• Ep. 172: College Series, Part 4 - Emergencies Happen 
• Ep. 171: College Series, Part 3 - Going Out
• Ep. 170: College Series, Part 2 - Defining Safe at College
• Ep. 169: College Series, Part 1 - Roommates

You can find FAACT's Roundtable Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Spotify, Podbay, iHeart Radio, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, Threads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube.

Sponsored by: DBV Technologies

Thanks for listening! FAACT invites you to discover more exciting food allergy resources at FoodAllergyAwareness.org!

Transcript

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Caroline: Welcome to FAACT's Roundtable, a podcast dedicated to navigating life with food allergies across the lifespan. Presented in a welcoming format with interviews and open discussions,

each episode will explore a specific topic, leaving you with the facts to know or use.

Information presented via this podcast is educational and not intended to provide individual medical advice.

Please consult with your personal board certified allergist or healthcare providers for advice specific to your situation. Hi everyone. I'm Caroline Moassessi and I am your host for the FAACT Roundtable Podcast. I am a food allergy parent and advocate and the founder of the Grateful Foodie Blog. And I am FAACT's Vice President of Community Relations.

Before we start today, I just want to say thank you to DBV Technologies for being a kind and generous sponsor of FAACT's Roundtable Podcast.

Imagine this moment a year from now. Your student has finally been accepted to college.

Everyone is celebrating until one question suddenly hits you. How will they eat safely every single day?

For families living with food allergies, choosing a college isn't just about majors, campus tours, or scholarships. It's about finding a place where your student can thrive academically while also feeling safe, supported and confident living independently.

In today's special solo episode,

I, Caroline Moassessi, your host of FAACT's Roundtable Podcast and FAACT Vice President of Community Relations,

will walk you through the key questions to ask,

the conversations to have,

and the planning that can make your students transition to college safer, smoother, and more successful.

Welcome, everyone. I'm honored and thrilled to help your student explore colleges when they have food allergies. This is an exciting time,

but I'm sure it's bringing up some of the biggest questions your family will face, too.

How do you choose a campus that's the right fit? What should you ask on the campus tour?

When do accommodations come into the conversation?

And then how do you help your student prepare for living safely and confidently on their own without you?

Together, we're going to tackle some of the biggest questions families have and give you practical tools to help you guide your student through the college search.

My hope is that by the end of this episode, you will feel more confident and you'll realize that you've been preparing your child for this moment all along.

Every grocery trip, every restaurant conversation, every doctor's appointment,

every reminder to carry epinephrine, those lessons have quietly built the foundation they'll use in college.

Basically, you've been preparing them all along.

Before we dive into checklists and questions, there's one thing I want every family to remember.

Colleges change,

policies change staff change,

dining programs change.

What you see on a campus tour today may look very different by the time your student arrives a year later. I've seen this happen with both of my students at their colleges and multiple friends.

Things just change and it's all about the pivot.

The second piece of overall advice is to stay open.

Even if you see a campus that doesn't have a good food allergen policy in place, this does not mean that it is not being currently discussed or might be coming in in the future.

For example, the college my son attended for undergraduate work did not have a disability office or even a designated person to handle disabilities when he was doing his exploration.

But the college explained to him that they were committed to hiring a person soon and most likely if he attended the school,

that that person would be in place by then and that they were open to receiving support and information from him if he were to attend that college. They wanted to learn about food allergies, they just didn't have it in place.

The final overall tip is to remember this is a time to explore and not look for a college purely based on allergen policy.

Our kids truly want to attend colleges where they can not only thrive with their food allergies, but to enjoy a college that meets their academic, social and financial needs.

It's all about balance and knowing that your student can work with their doctor to strategize plans to attend college safety.

Please note that so many students have gone to college and worked with the college to help them with their policy,

or just worked with the college to work on their own personal protocol and it turned out terrific.

Let's look at a few tools to help you with your student strategy to explore colleges.

First, make a plan to keep notes on each specific college and how you will rank them over time.

Maybe use a shared spreadsheet like Google. Consider using a note taking app on your student's phone.

But the key is just to keep the information clear across colleges because they're going to start to get jumbled.

I still laugh when I think about our first few college tours, which was about nine years ago. I handed my son a notebook and a pen and he looked at me like I'd completely lost my mind.

I'm not taking notes, he said.

Fast forward three campus visits later.

Suddenly he couldn't remember which college offered medical singles, which one had shared bathrooms, or which dining hall had made to order meals.

Guess whose notebook became very popular?

Mine.

And now back to some suggestions and tips with your student. Create a list of needs that can also be managed on a shared spreadsheet or again, a phone app.

For example, both of my now college graduate students noted the type of school's location. Urban, suburban? Was it a college town?

What was the transportation like from home to college?

Meaning was traveling home for breaks easy to do? Were they flying across country? Was it realistic?

I personally wanted my kids to be within driving distance to save on money and travel and just in case there was an emergency.

I also wanted easy flight or driving access.

I didn't share this though,

during the exploration process,

and I waited till they narrowed down their list of their favorites because I didn't want my opinions to come in too hard.

But it was very hard to not voice my biased opinions.

For both my kids, they wanted to know that they could thrive safely on campus before they applied to any schools.

They wanted to understand if they could easily access safe foods daily and that their living arrangements were safe.

My son, he wanted a medical single and he wanted to live on campus all four years.

He knew from the very beginning that he wanted that single and that he was going to stay on campus.

But my daughter, she was the opposite. She wanted a roommate because she was excited about the social experience.

But once she got there, she realized that a medical single was a better fit for her. Even though her roommate had the same food allergies,

she just realized she preferred to be alone.

That's an important reminder. It's okay to change your mind once you're actually living the experience,

but overall, when you're touring campuses, it is really good to pay attention to what are the living arrangements and what suits your student, Their needs, their personality,

their health needs, and their social needs.

Also,

both of them put on their list having access to health care such as a hospital.

Access to a local allergist was important,

although both of them decided to wait and see their allergist on the breaks.

They also wanted easy access to grocery stores to buy their endless supplies of snacks. Both of them even had snack carts in their room.

If you're feeling a little overwhelmed already, that is completely normal.

Because this is all new territory.

Here's the good news though. We've all been there. No one rolls up to this new phase of life with complete ease.

One of my favorite fact resources is our College Resource Center. Because it doesn't just hand you information,

it walks beside your family through every single stage of the process.

Whether you're just beginning your search, comparing colleges, preparing to move in, or commuting from home, We've created checklists and tools specifically for families living with food allergies.

I'm incredibly biased, but take a few minutes to visit each center within the College Resource Center, and there are nine of them in there. And be sure to visit the For Parents and Caregiver Center and encourage your student to visit the four Student Centers too.

In these two areas you will find checklists providing prompts to important questions and tasks to examine during each phase of the college process.

Also, it's really important to visit the Legal Consideration section because that is going to give you information on those medical singles,

how to access your students records and information including health care. There's just a lot of rich information in that center so make sure you hit that one too.

Most of our discussion today is based on the Getting Started Exploring Colleges checklist found in the For Parents and Caregiver Center.

Please download and explore this checklist at your own pace.

The next step after having your student create their list of needs is to encourage them to actually create their checklist of questions that they're going to ask every single college and a good place to start is with FAACT's Getting Started Exploring College Checklist that's in our College Resource Center.

Take those checklists and then redesign them to fit your needs.

The point of those checklists are to give you ideas and talking points.

Before we discuss the types of questions and areas to consider,

understand that your student and family might gather information about a campus from various sources such as campus tours, virtual tours and interactive maps.

Events or meeting with administration representatives visiting your area or even campus fly in events for prospective students or you might even be speaking to other families.

Take good notes and remember when speaking to other families or friends that each student living with food allergies have different health needs.

Varying levels of food allergy education and protocols are in place for how they manage their condition,

meaning what works for one student. Managing food allergies may not work for the next student or vice versa.

At my son's campus, he had a great experience with the dining hall as they prepared a special meal for him each day in the kitchen. Based on that day's menu,

they would simply pull his food from the kitchen line before it hit the buffet. Or they would make him a special meal based on his favorites and he loved it.

But then I met another family whose student absolutely hated having to go to the dining hall 10 minutes early to grab their special meal.

So now you can see it's important to work with your student on what might work best for them,

what might make them feel most comfortable, and now is the time for all those conversations,

no matter what, during this exploration time, the biggest question on everyone's mind is if the college has policy in place to manage students with food allergies. Some colleges ask students to work with the college's dietitian to manage their food allergies,

while others want the student to work with the head of dining services.

Or they might use a college specific app to manage daily meals.

If you're thinking, wow, this sounds like a lot, you're not alone.

Every parent feels that way at first. Good news is you don't have to figure out everything today,

you just simply need to know where to begin.

Sometimes it feels complicated in the beginning,

but the really good place to start your research is to ask who to speak to in the Office of Disabilities to learn more about how to not only establish accommodations,

but is there a specific policy in place for students with food allergies? And note,

some colleges use different names for this office.

Some call it the Office of Academic Support,

the Disabilities Office, etc.

Please do note that even if a college states they have food allergy policy in place,

ask to read it to ensure it's logical and can be adapted to meet your students need.

For example, a college might offer a top nine allergen free food station, but your student only has one allergen and prefers to eat in the main dining hall.

Is this allowed?

Or does the school want your student to eat at the allergen station? Only if there's one skill I hope my children would leave home with.

It wasn't just learning how to read a food label,

it was learning how to communicate.

College is where students begin advocating for themselves,

not by being demanding,

simply by being clear.

The more they practice speaking up during their college visits, the more confident they will become once they move into campus.

Using their voice on campus also includes knowing who to speak to about their food allergies and to understand who is who.

For example, some colleges use the terms like RA or CA.

RA can stand for Resident Advisor or Resident Assistant.

These students will often oversee the immediate dorm room floors where they also live.

Some colleges use the term CA instead, which stands for Community Advisor.

Also,

an RD could be used for Resident Director, who oversees the entire residential area,

or RD could stand for Registered Dietitian.

So many acronyms to learn,

but it's really important that your student learns the language.

And here's a side note tip.

This is also a great time to teach your student food allergy language.

Studies have shown that some teens with food allergies don't use the term anaphylaxis or even fully understand it.

Now, continuing our journey,

we're going to focus on the biggest areas of concerns for students with food allergies, which are how to live and eat safely on campus.

If you only remember five things from today's episode,

Let them be who coordinates food allergy accommodations?

How do students actually receive and secure safe meals?

What housing options are available?

What are the first year housing requirements?

Because there is a little difference there and perhaps most importantly,

what type of living environment will help my student thrive?

Meaning does your student want a roommate? Do they want a medical single? Now is the time for those conversations.

Let's focus now on dining services,

which is typically the department responsible for helping students navigate meals on campus.

While housing oversees the residence halls, suites and campus apartments at college, they need to work with their Office of Disabilities to re establish their needs in the new environment,

which includes dining services,

housing and other areas.

So all you're doing is re establishing accommodations while exploring campuses, encourage your student to learn about how food is being served or accessed on campus. For example,

questions to ask Are there multiple dining halls? Grab and go coffee shop? Places to eat?

Outside vendors like fast food?

Where do students with food allergies typically eat? What does that look like? Do they prearrange meals to be picked up? Do they order from an app? Are they able to get specific made to order food from themed stations like a pasta station or taco station?

As your student gets more serious about certain colleges, encourage them to reach out to that Office of Disabilities to learn more details and to find out who they should speak to regarding dining services and housing.

Once you've started asking questions about dining, there's also another area that deserves just as much attention and that's housing.

Where your student sleeps can be just as important as where they eat.

Every campus offers different housing options.

You may find traditional resident halls, medical singles, doubles, triples, suites, apartments, private bathrooms, shared bathroom,

even small kitchenettes.

Learning what each campus offers and what is available through accommodations can make a tremendous difference. It's important to start the conversation with your student about roommates. We mentioned that a little earlier and if they want to live in a medical single dorm room or shared again, these choices are very specific to your student and their needs.

We've all heard success stories of students with food allergies arriving to campus and they have roommates and it just works out great. And then we've heard stories of students going into a medical single and having a great time.

It just depends on the student.

Also, as you explore the living arrangements.

Do think about the bathrooms and if they're shared and specifically are the showers shared?

I'll be honest, my daughter had a tough time because she has asthma and some people in her dorm were using perfumed shower gel and items like this and so she needed to talk to people.

Also, you have to be concerned about allergen exposure from shampoos or soaps if you're using a shared bathroom.

For my son in his medical single, the bathroom was Jack and Jill style. So his dorm was on one side, there was a bathroom in the middle, and then there's another medical single on the other side.

So he just worked it out with the student. Then he eventually moved to a suite situation where he had a single room, but there was a shared bathroom with two or three other people and again they just spoke to each other and then they worked it out.

Now let's shift our attention and let's talk about health and your student taking care of any ongoing treatments and emergencies.

During this exploration stage, it's important to understand how your student will continue treatment such as OIT or slit. Will they return home for treatments or can the college's healthcare center or local allergist continue the treatment?

Is it reasonable for the student to travel home for continued treatment?

And this element also ties in with the location of the college because is the college close to home that will help with the treatments or is it multiple flights away and is going to impede on the treatment?

Also regarding health, a lot of students will ask about health care.

Is there a dentist close by? An eye doctor? Are there any other specialists that they need? That's another important thing to take into consideration when you are exploring colleges. But most of all, it's important to speak to your student's doctor to learn about how they will continue treatments, how they will continue to receive health care.

Turning to Emergencies now it's important to learn about how emergencies are handled.

And are there local hospitals close by or is this college in a very remote area and does that make your student feel uncomfortable?

This might be a good time to explore how medical emergencies are handled on campus as well. And is there easy access to local pharmacies?

Finally, and I can't emphasize this enough,

college isn't just about finding the right campus. It's also about preparing your student for independence.

This is the perfect time to practice everyday skills together,

such as filling prescriptions, making doctor's appointments, completing medical forms, managing epinephrine expiration dates, grocery shopping, ordering at a restaurant,

speaking to people of authority about their food allergies and speaking to peers, just to name a few.

The For Parents and Caregivers checklist offers more self management skill suggestions.

And also every campus visit is an opportunity for your student to practice speaking up. Encourage them, not you, to ask dining service questions. Let them call disability services,

have them introduce themselves to housing.

Those conversations are just as valuable as the answers they need to receive,

because every interaction builds confidence that they that they'll need when they arrive on campus.

So now it's time for me to say to you Congratulations. You have already taken the first step simply by listening today.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, remember this.

You don't have to figure everything out before your first campus tour.

College planning is a journey, not something that's completed in one weekend.

Every question you ask,

every conversation your student has,

every campus you visit builds confidence for the day they move in. You've already spent years teaching your child how to live safely with food allergies.

College is simply the next chapter.

And remember, you don't have to navigate it alone.

Visit FAACT's College Resource Center, download the free checklist that we've talked about today,

and join our private Facebook community. For parents and caregivers of high school and college students living with food allergies,

you'll find families who've walked this path before you and are eager to share what they've learned.

Thank you so much for spending time with me today.

And on behalf of everyone at fact,

thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

And listeners, please note that I will put in the show notes all the links to these checklists and that private Facebook community group.

Before we say goodbye today,

I just want to take a moment to say thank you to DBV Technologies one more time for being a kind and generous sponsor of FAACT's roundtable podcast.

Caroline: Thank you for listening to FAACT's Roundtable Podcast.

Stay tuned for future episodes coming soon.

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Caroline: Have a great day and always be kind to one another.