Kids With Food Allergies (KFA), a division of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, is asking you to help our fellow families in Illinois who have been burdened, displaced or evacuated due to severe storms and tornadoes.

Families who have children with food allergies are presented with challenging circumstances during emergencies. Some of the unique requirements of this population after disasters include:

1.    Shelters without animals, with safe kitchens and asthma/allergy-friendly bedding
2.    Medications on-site including nebulizers for asthmatics and epinephrine for severe allergic reactions
3.    Food safe for food-allergic, food-intolerant and gluten-free individuals
4.    Elemental formula for infants with special restrictive diet nutritional needs

The KFA Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Relief Committee has been monitoring the situation in Illinois and members in that local area have made contact with different organizations in the affected area so that we can organize a food drive to collect allergy-friendly foods and distribute them to families in need.

If you have allergy-friendly, shelf-stable items you would like to donate, please clearly mark the box with large words "ALLERGY-FRIENDLY" or "GLUTEN-FREE" as applicable and mail them to:

These three locations will take donations of any and all allergy-friendly food items and will distribute them directly to the families in need of special food. PLEASE try your best to bag them or box them and CLEARLY LABEL with the words *FOOD ALLERGY FRIENDLY*. Look for items that are FREE of the top 8 allergens: Dairy, Soy, Eggs, Peanuts, Tree Nuts, Fish, Shellfish, Wheat/Gluten.

When we confirm additional locations willing to accept and distribute allergy-friendly goods, we will post an update to this blog. Please share this blog post to help our food drive, and to help get this information to families who need allergy-friendly foods.

With natural disasters on the rise, we would like to remind all families managing food allergies to take a moment and review our tips for Disaster and Emergency Preparedness with Food Allergy Concerns.

The Kids With Food Allergies Disaster Preparedness/Emergency Readiness Committee is comprised of volunteers from across the United States and we thank them for their help in these relief efforts.