School Allergy Policies across the States: A Holistic Review of State-Level Guidelines

Food allergies affect approximately two children per average-sized classroom, and prevalence has increased in recent decades (Gupta et al., 2011; Pawankar et al., 2013). This increase has important implications for school psychologists and counselors because allergies can impact various psychosocial aspects of students' lives (Vale et al., 2015). Unfortunately, psychosocial considerations related to allergy management are often treated as peripheral in school food allergy policy development (Behrmann, 2010a). The purpose of the current review was to examine the availability of state-level guidelines and to evaluate available guidelines according to research supported practices for students including those impacting psychosocial facets of students' lives. Guideline documents identified varied in size and form and when available tended to provide limited coverage of social and emotional factors. Our review provides insight into scope of attention to psychosocial facets of well-being in state-level allergy policy guidelines and concludes with implications for practice across multiple tiers of support.