Federal Health Leaders Convene at Food Allergy Fund Forum to Shape the Future of Allergy Research and Innovation
In an unprecedented demonstration of federal commitment to a long-overlooked public-health crisis, senior leaders from the nation’s top health agencies joined the Food Allergy Fund (FAF) for its flagship Leadership Forum—a high-level convening designed to unite government officials, scientific innovators, medical researchers, philanthropists, and industry partners around one accelerating mission: addressing the growing burden of food allergies. Affecting 1 in 13 children and 1 in 10 adults in the United States, food allergies represent one of the most pervasive yet underrecognized chronic health threats of this generation.
Throughout the event, federal health officials emphasized the urgent need for coordinated action. They pointed to rising prevalence, increasing severity of reactions, and the expanding economic and emotional costs for families. Their collective presence signaled what many attendees described as a long-awaited turning point in elevating food allergies to the level of national attention directed at other major chronic and life-threatening conditions.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary delivered keynote remarks that underscored a rare cross-agency alignment. Secretary Kennedy opened the forum by affirming that the Food Allergy Fund’s mission reflects a broader shift in federal thinking: food allergies must now be treated as a pressing public-health priority, not a peripheral issue.
“Under my leadership, HHS is making it a top priority to uncover the root causes of food allergies,” Kennedy said. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and his Make America Healthy Again vision, we’re confronting the childhood chronic disease epidemic at its source — restoring the health of our children and the nation.” His remarks emphasized the administration’s intent to investigate environmental and biological drivers and to catalyze interventions that could reverse current trends.
NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya reinforced that nutrition science and immunology are central pillars of the NIH’s research agenda. “As a cornerstone of NIH’s mission, nutritional science research advances gold-standard, evidence-based discoveries that empower all Americans to live healthier lives and reduce the burden of chronic disease,” Bhattacharya said. He highlighted both the challenges and opportunities in accelerating research across immunology, microbiome science, and environmental exposures to inform preventive strategies and therapeutics.
For Ilana Golant—founder and CEO of the Food Allergy Fund, a mother of a child with food allergies, and herself an adult who developed new allergies later in life—the federal presence marked a profound and long-awaited shift. She emphasized that nearly half of all food allergies now begin in adulthood, a trend that challenges outdated assumptions and calls for expanded research.
“Food allergies remain one of the most overlooked and underfunded public-health challenges,” Golant said. “Also, they may be the canary in the coal mine for a broader immune-health crisis. By breaking down silos and uniting science, policy, and innovation, we can unlock solutions that reach far beyond food allergies.” Her message underscored the belief that food allergies are symptomatic of wider changes in environmental exposures, gut health, diet, and immunological resilience.
One of the event’s most closely watched speakers was Dr. Alicia Jackson, recently appointed Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). Known for pioneering bold, high-risk, high-reward innovation models, ARPA-H is increasingly recognized as a transformative force capable of accelerating breakthroughs in areas where traditional research funding has struggled to keep pace.
“I came to lead ARPA-H to tackle and to solve the major health challenges facing Americans today, like the food allergy crisis,” Jackson said. “ARPA-H exists for one purpose: to take on the challenges that are too big, too complex, and too high-risk for traditional funding or industry. We are calling on the best researchers, entrepreneurs, and leaders to send us their brightest minds with the passion, expertise, and ideas that can create a future where preventing and eliminating food allergies is fully possible.” Her comments reflected ARPA-H’s intent to mobilize multidisciplinary teams capable of designing moonshot-scale solutions—from next-generation immunotherapies to diagnostic platforms capable of predicting allergic reactions before they occur.
Following the keynotes, a panel of leading health-tech CEOs showcased next-generation innovations poised to reshape the landscape of allergy prevention and treatment. Demonstrations included AI-powered wearable devices capable of detecting early biomarkers of anaphylaxis, a toothpaste-based oral immunotherapy platform designed to build tolerance through everyday routines, and a new biologic therapy representing a potential leap forward in precision treatment. Together, these technologies illustrated how patient-centered innovation could shorten time to diagnosis, mitigate risk, improve emergency response, and, ultimately, reduce dependence on restrictive avoidance strategies that currently dominate patient life.
One of the most significant announcements of the Forum was the launch of the Food Allergy Fund’s Microbiome Collective—a multi-million-dollar, multi-institution collaboration designed to uncover the root causes of food allergies and related immune-mediated diseases. The initiative is the first of its kind in its scale, structure, and ambition, bringing together leading research institutions with standardized protocols, harmonized datasets, and shared clinical endpoints.
The Collective builds on the promising microbiome research FAF has already supported. Among the early breakthroughs is a first-in-human trial at Boston Children’s Hospital, which demonstrated that a single microbiota transfer treatment resulted in up to a six-fold increase in peanut tolerance for 40% of participants. In parallel, University of Chicago researchers, supported by FAF, have been exploring synbiotic and probiotic therapies capable of retraining the immune system to tolerate allergenic foods.
Dr. Rima Rachid, director of the Food Allergy Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, emphasized the importance of scale, consistency, and multi-site collaboration. “Previous microbiome studies have been limited by small sample sizes, different methodologies, and isolated datasets,” Rachid said. “FAF’s Collective model creates the scale and standardization needed to link specific microbiome mechanisms to disease, and, more importantly, to develop precision treatments.”
Dr. Susan Lynch, director of the Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine and a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, reinforced that food allergies may represent only the starting point for what microbiome science could achieve. “We believe food allergies are just the tip of the iceberg,” Lynch said. “How we understand and modulate the microbiome could transform how we prevent and treat a whole spectrum of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.”
Looking ahead, the Food Allergy Fund announced that it will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) in the coming weeks, inviting research teams to submit projects focused on developing advanced diagnostics, novel treatments, and preventive approaches for food allergies. Priority will be given to collaborative, multi-site studies capable of scaling quickly and translating into tangible improvements in patient care.
The Forum concluded with a shared message: food allergy research stands at a pivotal inflection point. With cross-agency alignment, growing federal investment, groundbreaking research, and emerging technologies, the Food Allergy Fund believes that a future in which food allergies can be effectively prevented—and potentially eliminated—is becoming increasingly possible.
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