Ep. 208: The Latest Airline News and Advocacy Artwork

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FAACT's Roundtable

Ep. 208: The Latest Airline News and Advocacy

June 05, 2024 • Lianne Mandelbaum • Season 4 • Episode 209

The founder of No Nut Traveler, Lianne Mandelbaum, recently shared life-changing news about legislation directly impacting the safety of flying with food allergies. We’re exploring what this law passage means to our food allergy community and her air travel food allergy advocacy. Including the No Nut Traveler Grassroots Army launch, why collecting airline travel stories and testimony helps advocacy, and how you can get involved.

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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 Fact Roundtable podcast. I am a food allergy parent advocate and the founder of the Gratefulfoodie blog, and I am FAACT's Vice President of Community Relations. The Founder of No Nut Traveler, Lianne Mandelbaum, recently shared momentous news about legislation directly impacting the safety of flying with food allergies. We're exploring what this new law passage means to our food allergy community and her advocacy work, including the no nut traveler grassroots army launch, why collecting airline travel stories and testimony helps advocacy, and then how you can get involved before we start today, I would just like to take a moment to thank the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology for their kind sponsorship of FAACT's Roundtable Podcast. And please note that today's guest was not sponsored by the college or compensated in any way by the sponsor to participate in this specific podcast. Welcome back, Leanne to FAACT's Roundtable podcast. This is going to be an absolutely exciting podcast as we explore what the new airline legislation means to our community and we learn a little more about what you're up to lately.

Lianne: I am really excited to be back. This is a great time to be an airline advocacy for food allergies, and.

Caroline: It'S been long in the making, and listeners, you'll learn about that in just a few minutes. So now, Leanne, you are just known as a food allergy force of nature. So let's start the conversation by sharing your story and then how you became the no nut traveler.

Lianne: I think most people know it, but just in case, I'm going to try to make it as short as possible. We were coming home from a family vacation. My son, who is now 18, was eight. He had never worried about his peanut at that time, tree nut and egg allergies, and carried his auto injector with him everywhere. And it didn't really interfere in our life other than we carried the auto injector everywhere and we were going to be boarding a plane, but we were sitting in the departure lounge. Someone sitting directly behind us heard me tell Josh that he couldn't go into Rocky Mountain fudge store because they were making fresh peanut butter fudge and handing out samples. And the woman turned around to me and she said, does your son have a peanut allergy? I said, he does. He has an anaphylactic peanut allergy. And she said, well, I suggest you move. We're all going to be eating peanuts here. And I appreciated the heads up. Unfortunately, I was left with all the luggage because everyone else, we were traveling with another family. So everyone else and Josh's siblings had gone off to purchase airline food because they didn't have to worry. And I was sprarting luggage with Josh. So I took, like, three trips to move us to, like, a different part of the departure lounge. And unfortunately, the woman's three children throw peanuts up in the air, miss them in their mouths on purpose, crush them underfoot and push the dust towards Josh and start laughing when he became somewhat fearful. So I had already ascertained that they were going to be on our Newark bound flight because we were leaving out of Denver. And I was not panicked at this moment. I stood on the United Customer service line. I got to the front and they said, we're sorry, ma'am. This is not United customer service issue. I was totally confused at that point and asked to speak to the manager. And I went through the chain of command at Denver, and the last United manager, presumably one who was supposed to deal with customers, right, and make them feel safe on airlines, said, well, if you think he's going to die, just don't get on the plane. At which point, Josh, who hadn't ever been terrified about his allergy, became terrified. And he said, I'm only eight. You can't put me on the plane. The man said, I could die. There are boys throwing peanuts at me. Please don't make me get on the plane. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. So we didn't get on that plane. We did get home, not on united. And I was enraged. And I started Google search, and I found out that my story really wasn't so bad. There were families being kicked off planes, children and adults both being humiliated, reactions taking place in the air, crew making fun of people with food allergies. There was no one really collecting all those types of stories. And I said, okay, I'm going to start collecting stories and we're going to change this. I had a little yellow sketch pad I still have somewhere I have because I did a presentation once. I have a picture of it, and my cousin was a website designer. And literally three weeks later, I think we had it up and running with a link. I wanted a link to the dot because I didn't know what my rights were, and I wanted people to be able to file complaints. I started a petition. It guarded 100,000 signatures. That's neither here nor there, even though it sounds like it should be. From there, I started writing, and everything sort of morphed, like everything I've become and everything I've done is something I had no skill set for yet learned along the way. Every testimonial I collect, and that's still, I think, the most important thing I do. I feel like I could tell you about each and every story, and there've been a lot of them now because I feel like it's happened to a family member or a good friend. And I am outraged and sad and depressed and happy when they're good experiences for each of my extended family members. Because I think you and I can agree that the food allergy community, to me, is like no other. Like, we want to protect everyone who has a food allergy, and we want to share our recipes, and we want to share our airline horrors, and we want to give people travel tips because we don't want people to hit the pitfalls that we did. And we do feel every loss of a child or an adult with a food allergy very personally. And that's how I feel about my advocacy. It's personal when it happens to you, when it happens to someone else, it's personal. Everyone is family. That's how I feel.

Caroline: And I think that's what makes you so successful. Your passion is what drives it and what puts the energy behind you. And when people meet with you, even legislators, they can see that and feel that. And I think that's what gives you that edge. And that makes you a standout. And no net travelers stand out.

Lianne: Well, I'm not here to usurp anyone else's role. I saw a need, that there was a void, and I'm in there. But now there's a lot to fix besides airlines and did take no nut traveler to the next level and form a non profit. And full disclosure, Caroline, who's interviewing me here, is on my board, along with two other brilliant women, also mothers of food allergy children. And it's not to say that mothers are the only ones that can solve this, but, my God, are we motivated. You know, we want to make the world safer for our child and people like our children and adults, because you know what? Our children even Josh is 18. I'm still calling him my child. But, you know, when I started this, he was eight. But always in my mind, I was fast forwarding to when he would be an adult. I wouldn't be with him when he's traveling. And the world needs to be safer, and the world needs to have policies. And this is ridiculous. This is a legitimate medical condition. The fact that it's still the butt of so many jokes in the mainstream media, in the movies, is just absurd. And so that's something else I've tackled. But really, no nut traveler is here to support food allergy families when they fly, but also to support everyone doing good advocacy and how we can help.

Caroline: Obviously, I'm a little biased, but I fully agree. So now, to help our listeners better understand airline travel, can you just discuss briefly the current barriers and what changes you believe are needed to improve travel in the sky? Like, give us a lay of the land?

Lianne: I mean, that's the problem. There's no lay of the land I could tell you that I have had, and it's true. My last three or four experiences flying on United have been phenomenal. They have let me pre board, which is something that Mary Vargas, myself, and a team took. One of my testimonials, we saw there was a trend with American Airlines, specifically not only having a policy in writing, but actively carrying out, not letting people pre board. And sometimes people in the community don't even realize we've won this right. Dot ruled. Anyone boarding a plane to the US or in the US has the right to pre board if you have a food allergy and make your area safe by cleaning all the surrounding areas. Because the easiest way to have a reaction in the air is to come across your allergen when it's not cleaned, and it's whatever goes up, comes down. Humans are messy when we eat, and getting rid of that past contamination goes a long way for making your flight safer. So that is a right that we fought for and have, and they let me do that. But they also have been lately removing mixed tree nuts. They've made planewide announcements, which is not even in their policy. And yet I collect testimonials that say people having these same experiences, and that is not just unique to united, that is unique to every airline. Delta of late has been great with peanut allergies, but people have reported awful, awful experiences with tree nut allergies, which don't seem to garner the same respect, which can, you know, anaphylaxis is anaphylaxis. So you know, if you can go into anaphylaxis from, you know, a peanut, you can go into anaphylaxis from a tree nut, you can go into anaphylaxis from dairy. But it's not that nuts are more special. We must address this because I was thinking about this in preparation for this. They're not special and they're not any more special than any other allergen. However, there is a unique nutty culture that is up in the sky, where airlines have made it so that nuts are part of the premium experience of flying. And that is something at some point, that has to change. And that's why sometimes you'll often encounter more of your allergen up in the air than on the ground, except for baseball game like, you know, obviously you go, you go to your baseball game, you're going to see a lot of nuts. But the landscape is inconsistency. The only consistency about flying with food allergies is the consistent inconsistency. So you don't know which crew you're going to get. Are you going to get a crew that enforces, like, an airline's great policy? I had a united crew, I actually filed a dot complaint over a year ago. So somewhat recently, where they literally, I tried to show them their own policy of just telling the people around us that we were traveling with an allergy. I didn't ask for suspension, I didn't ask for a plane ride announcement. I just made them aware and asked them to tell the rose in front of us and behind us, they will listen to that flight attendant. And the woman looked at me, put her hand in my face and said, ma'am, this is not going to happen on this plane. What are you going to do about it now? I went and I sat back down because I was going to get thrown off the plane, which happens as well. And I knew when to cut my losses. But that's so different from the recent experiences I've had. So it's really, really challenging that even when an airline has a policy, sometimes they don't follow it and the pilot has final discretion. And we've seen just this holiday weekend, and I was thinking to myself, every time where I go to sit down and have a cup of coffee and enjoy the holiday weekend with my family, something pops up on Twitter and so, or x, as it's now called. And sure enough, there is a story of someone in the UK who was taken off a flight by a pilot for disclosing a peanut allergy. And the father tried to like negotiate and then you, it's just, it's, it's 2024. There's no reason that anybody for any food allergy should be asked to leave a plane. There's always a way to make things work. There's always a way. So we have a lot more work to do, a lot more work to do. We really need change. And what I really am striving for is fair, evenly promulgated food allergy policies throughout global aviation. Because flying is not a us problem. Flying is a global problem. We have friends across the pond that fly to us, we fly to them, we fly all over the world. The world is global. Food allergies are a growing global epidemic, a growing public health problem. Great data out of northwestern and Ruchi Gupta's group on this that continues to be solidified year after year after year. That shows the growing increases in global food allergies. So we want to act in front of a tragedy. That's our biggest drive. Right? We don't want any more funerals.

Caroline: And you're so right, because a lot of our children now are growing up and they're going to college and they have to fly for college. And now because of us being so able to work remotely, someone can live in California, but their job is actually in New York and a couple of times a year they need to fly. So now flying has become more of a workplace option as well. And so I think that's why this conversation is important. So now let's roll right into the exciting new news.

Lianne: Before we go into the news, let's just, like, mention the fact that we did with Ruchi Gupta's group, and you also are an author on this survey of airline food allergy travel. Important about our survey, which is hopefully going to be published in full in the coming weeks. It's the first time I've seen the patient's lived experience, catch up to the data, catch up to the patient's lived experience. And, you know, I met some people, even just this past weekend that I had a waitress served me and she told us of her best friend who had an emergency landing due to a peanut allergy on a plane. And my editor, Gwen Smith from Allergic living was sitting with me. She was serving us both. And her first question was, well, what does she do now? And she doesn't fly. She's afraid. And I think one of the things we'll do when we do a follow up survey is that a lot of people told me, I couldn't fill out your survey because I don't travel anymore because this happened to me. So that's. Yet that's one of the reasons I think we have low numbers sometimes. But also what you'll see that the survey does is that the numbers are not as low as other reported studies. The numbers are actually quite high, comparatively so. And why is that? It's not because we're doing retrospective. What it is is that other studies are looking at when auto injectors are used out of medical kits or the vials are drawn. But in my experience collecting testimonials, what we see is that a physician would rather pull an entire plane and crowdsource for an auto injector than use that vial because it's a weight based formula. And sometimes also in the United States, those vials are under an exemption and had many physicians, including real doctor Mike from Instagram, find only a cardiac dose and have to do some sort of titrating of devices. So we have artificially low numbers in these studies. And I want to tell you that I have contacted the FAA no less than four times, and they have said quite emphatically, leanne, we do not collect this data. So there really is no data that's accurate. I'm proud that our survey will be step one in addressing that gap. Now we can move on to the exciting news.

Caroline: Thank you for bringing that up. Really timely and really excellent. Now we're going to move on to the exciting news that can potentially save lives and make air travel safer for people with allergies. So in lay terms, can you explain what legislation was passed and then how will it impact our community?

Lianne: So there was a new FAA reauthorization act finally passed by the House and the Senate and signed pretty much immediately by President Biden. And in fact, I was in the air on the way to a tournament with my now 18 year old son when he signed the act. So it was somewhat surreal to be on a plane. I almost wanted to get up and scream, do you know what just happened? But you know, you can't do that. I was very excited. My son and I did a nice little clink of glasses a night later. And President Biden signed the FAA Act Reauthorization act of 2024 into law. And tucked into it was a clause that directly referenced airplane emergency medical kits, the emks and anaphylaxis. So what it does, and it's actually in section 368 if anyone wants to go look it up, it opens up the way for FAA to make a rulemaking that will mandate auto injectors and planes. They didn't use the word auto injector, I believe, because there are new forms of epinephrine coming down the pike. And I don't think they wanted to pigeonhole FAA into writing something that then the air couldn't put something else on. There is some concern that langs could potentially use epinephrine vial still, but it's a very unlikely scenario because basically the FAA is supposed to follow. Okay, so the language is pivotal because, and I think will not lend to anything other than an epinephrine auto injector or some newer medications to yet be approved coming down the pipe, because the FAA asked the aerospace Medical association to evaluate the kits, and they came back and the Office of Aerospace Medicine, and they also endorsed the use of auto injectors, I believe, in the vein of updating the entire kit, which is what this clause was about, is not just about allergies, because our listeners may not understand how monumental this is. But FAA has not issued a ruling on these kits in the form of a circular since 2006 based on recommendations from 2004. So it's not just allergies that have skyrocketed since then, but so many other conditions. And so I've been arguing for more than a decade that the contents of these emergency medical kits the emks have to the medical conditions of the decade we live in, and they have not. They fall so far short. It is my expectation that when they redo the list, it will include the right medications in the right forms of epinephrine, as well as a lot of other updates for public health. So this is a public health win for public health. I mean, there's just anyone who gets sick on a plane right now is dealing with a substandard kit, unless the airline has voluntarily upgraded. And I think that the biggest marker that we're about to see change is that Southwest has voluntarily just recently decided to put epinephrine auto injectors in all their kits. And I think that's because the advocacy that came around this, especially coming through Senator Duckworth's office in Illinois, came out of one of her constituents, Alexa Jordan, going into anaphylaxis on a Southwest flight where the crew was not trained what anaphylaxis were. She was in the bathroom by herself for hours. There was no backup epinephrine to offer her. So there were so many errors. And, you know, she has, to her credit, tirelessly lobbied for this experience not to happen to somebody else. And, you know, it's always so gratifying to see someone who's young, take this up and not drop it, because I have lots of testimonials, and I'm not judging. Well, it's hard. Advocacy is hard. Putting yourself out there is hard, and people will come at you for whatever reason. And so I have people who have had just as harrowing situations, if not worse than hers, and they haven't lit a fire under their legislature the way that Alexa did. And Senator Duckworth has been a true ally to the food allergy community and to her credit. You know, the office said, this is not about auto injectors. This is about revising the entire medical kit. And I am so grateful for her support. And, you know, when FAA reauthorization was making it through the rounds this summer, we got together with fact and allergy and asthma network and AFA, myself and fair. So all got together and wrote a cohesive letter, all asking for the same thing, that these kits be updated and that the correct medicines for anaphylaxis. And so the term anaphylaxis did make it into the bill. This is an issue where we see, really, you don't see any dissent within the food allergy community. The American Pediatrics association endorsed auto injectors being on planes for years. The college has endorsed it. Quad AI has endorsed it. So we've got a lot of medical weight really supporting this inclusion. So this definitely took a village. But I remember 2015, like, trekking down to Washington, DC, and being asked to testify in front of the Institute of Medicine, the global burden that food allergies had. And there were experts from all around the world. And the recommendations that came out of that were the start of trying to get it into FAA reauthorization. Not only did it say that there should be the right medications and training, but that there should be policies that address food allergies and not there yet, but that meeting and those recommendations served as, I would say, that's how long I've been working, a little before 2015, but it's been a decade. And it's, you know, along the way, we've picked up a lot of momentum and a lot of people helping us along the way. So I'm really thrilled that, I mean, this is much bigger than people realize.

Caroline: It's huge. It's giant. So now when should we expect to see the changes actually taking place?

Lianne: Moment President Biden signed the bill, there's a shot clock of two years on the FAA to issue this, so they, they know what's supposed to be on there. So let's hope that they see this as the public health emergency it is, and they act in front of you and they update the kit soon because there's not much research they have to do. You know, they have all the recommendations there. So they've literally been sitting on these recommendations since 2019. I've literally seen so many FAA reauthorizations come and go. Someone asked me, like, why didn't you go there to see him sign it in? Or. Because I actually ran down there last summer because I got a call saying, we think it's going to make it in. I want you to see this. You've been working on it. And so I took the train down, and everything imploded over issues having not to do with allergies. But it was great to be in the air and have it happen while I was in the air. It was really.

Caroline: I was about to say, that's the. Yeah, that's the perfect place. I mean, honestly, that was just serendipitous. And this is huge, and it's going to change so many things. It's great.

Lianne: So now, I hope so, because I've always said, you know, we face such criticism as pass flying with food allergies, like, you should have done this, you should have notified this, or that's an unfair burden on the captain. And people just don't seem to understand first, flying is not all about leisure. Sometimes I've had families fly for cancer treatments out of country, and they're worried that their child has an allergic reaction on the way there. I mean, I've cried myself to sleep on that. Like, how can you? You worry that your child's gonna die. And again, I feel like these people are my family, you know, so, like, I just. People don't imagine there's a funeral you have to make. There's an ailing relative that lives in a different country you want to say goodbye to. There's a friend you want to say goodbye to that's dying. I had a follower of mine, miss, saying goodbye to her brother. The only airline that could get her there on time was an airline that she'd had an allergic reaction on and will not stop serving her allergens. So she got in the car and she drove and saying goodbye to her brother. Like, these stories, sit with me, sit in my heart, and it shouldn't be. We don't ask to have this condition. It's not a lifestyle, it's not a preference. And all we're asked for a few strategies that can, you know, mitigate the risk. And I think the airline needs to share the responsibility, carry the right equipment. And I'm hoping that by addressing anaphylaxis and having the right medications to treat it and giving it the legitimacy it deserves, you know, when you ask for that accommodation that a flight attendant's like, hmm, you know, let me see what I can do. I don't want to use this medication on my shift. I want to have to use that auto injector. I don't want to have to call for a medical professional. You know, this is a growing epidemic. Let me treat this person with kindness and see what I can do. That's hope that it'll just give us a little more empathy and compassion.

Caroline: Well, you know, it gets better each year, slowly but surely, a few steps back, few steps forward, but when you look at the last decade, definitely better. Now, let's turn our attention, actually back to Nonet Traveler and your advocacy work. You just recently lodged the grassroots army, so can you tell everyone, what is this initiative? And then how can they get involved?

Lianne: Well, we've just been discussing, like, Vietnon traveler for the longest time, me, but now me, myself, and the three lovely board members I have, we've accomplished so much for a little organization, but we can accomplish so much more. Yet we're not fundraising, paying anybody salary. So, like, hmm, what to do? So here we have the grassroots army, where we ask people to join us around the world. Because, like I said, food allergies are not United States, they're not Canada, they're not Europe. They're everywhere. And so, better to advocate for what we need than the people who live it each day. Whether you live with the disease or you live with someone or love someone with the disease, you are the people we need in our corner. And so my goal was to section people off into states, and so far, I have, I think, about 35 different states. I have not promoted this. I posted it twice, and I have five different countries right now. I might have more. I haven't checked in the last week. That was over a 24 hours period. So give me time, because FAA reauthorization was happening at the same time, and I sort of dropped the ball because it was such exciting news, and I had to write an article for allergic living about FAA reauthorizations. I want us to be able to work together. And it's not just work together for. No, not Traveler. Right. Like, I was recently having a conversation with advocate Thomas Silvera, who sadly lost his son to an anaphylactic reaction, and he's looking at passing some legislation in California. And I said, aha, I know that I saw in my emails a whole bunch of signups, California and my grassroots army. Please let me know when and if you need us. Draft a letter and I will send it. So my goal is to help everyone who's in the space, whether it's another advocacy group, whether it's a fellow advocate, whether it's just a mom. There was an incident in Texas with my now friend Shawna Morrison, whose son's locker filled with peanuts at football practice, and it was all over his equipment, and the school did not do anything. And so we did a letter writing campaign from know not Traveler, things like that, and making it specific to the state, which might carry more weight, just getting people to weigh in. So that's our goal. It's a fluid goal, just like everything I do, I learn on the fly, define it as we go, because we evolve. We are not, I think, one of the biggest problems I see with organizations in general, and this is not just advocacy I'm talking about. My experience with the airline specifically, is institutional inertia. Like, you stick with things that you've done in the way that you've done them. Don't change. And the world changes so quickly. We live in a digital world. There are so many things I think we need to do with the emerging technology and the way the world is changing to help food allergy flyers. And if we don't adapt, we won't make change. And so everything we do at no Nat traveler is somewhat fluid. And so, as the advocacy part goes, because we go where we're needed, we'll help where we're needed, and we'll change the way that we help based upon who's asking for our help. So please, please, please, whoever you are listening, sign up. There's no charge, there's no obligation, there's no selling your names. There's truly that if there's somebody who needs help somewhere in the world that we can help, we will send you email and you could choose to help or choose not to help. That's literally what it's going to be.

Caroline: And listeners, I'll make sure that in the show notes, I have all the links to the different websites and the new legislation and to the grassroots army. And so now, before we end our conversation today, let's go back and talk a little bit about those testimonies. I mean, you have been collecting them tirelessly for years, and they're so important. So if you can talk to our listeners about why it's so critical to share those stories with you and then how they can share those stories with you.

Lianne: Sure. As far as why it's so important, I think we talked about this earlier, and I'll refer you back there. Whereas it, these testimonials that indicated there was an issue going on with American Airlines and pre boarding, and it was bringing those testimonials to DT with attorney Mary Vargas that gave all food allergy passengers the right to pre board an aircraft. That shows what we can do. The New York Times covered it, and the DoT gave a quote calling food allergies a disability under the Air Carrier Access act. And Mary and I were literally both in tears because no one and dot itself had called food allergy a disability under the Air Carrier Access act. And one of the mistakes people in the United States make is they assume that it's a disability under the American with Disabilities act, and it's not. When you fly, you go under the Air Care Access act and had not formally, under Dot bylaw, it had not been called. That was huge. That was the result, bearing testimonials. So it's really, really important that you share your stories also. I will then share it with a legislator or a member of the press if you want coverage. If you don't want coverage, that doesn't happen. There are never any names used with the stories. So on my website there is a link. It says, share your story and you can put your testimonial there. And we want the good stories and the bad stories and the importance of the good stories. If we go back to that survey out of Ruchi Gupta and Chris Warren's group at Northwestern, one of the things that came out of the survey is it showed that the more positive experiences you have on an airline, the more likely you are to recommend it to others and the more likely you are to fly it again. And what is it that fueled business growth is repeat business and repeat customers. And I think by having the data to show that we have these positive stories, positive stories actually lead to people purchasing more tickets, which leads to we are actually an economic potential. My goal eventually is to flip narrative completely. We are not a burden. We are economic potential. And I think that one of the reasons for continuing research and continuing sharing of these stories, both positive and negative, is to show them, look, when we have a bad experience, we're not going to fly your airline, we're not going to choose it. We have a good policy, and we see that people are respected, then we are, and we're free. Advertisement right again, we're this community that comes together and we share, and you know, I'm really excited. I think there's some like great avenues. You know, I'm looking forward to speaking for the Galen conference in September in Italy. I'm speaking and the fact influences summit in November. And I think that the more we talk about the positive also of airline travel and the positive of having this growing epidemic, but also growing epidemic means growing potential passengers. Right? So we have the power to make this, you know. Yes, you know, we're going to share the negative. We're going to advocate for change in better, but we're also going to continue to share the positive so that more people fly the airlines, that we have positive experiences, more people choose the restaurants. You know, we all share our successes.

Caroline: So we're at the end of our time together. So what words of wisdom would you like to leave our listeners with?

Lianne: Share your stories, continue to travel, take precautions like doing your research. Look at the stories on my website, see which airlines are most likely, if you can financially, schedule wise, if you can choose those airlines. I understand if you can't always, and that's why we need these evenly promulgated policies. But do your research. There are certain airlines that are known not to be friendly. There are certain airlines that overwhelmingly have positive testimonials. Do the pre board carry your auto injectors? Don't pack them underneath the plane. There are things we can do proactively. Share your testimonials. Sign up for the grassroots army. You know, pick your advocacy group and become a voice for change. Because we are the change. We can be the change, but only if we speak up and use our voices.

Caroline: Those are fantastic words to end by. Leanne thank you so much again for your time. We really appreciate your advocacy and you taking the time with us today so we can all better understand flying with food allergies and what's happening right now. And most importantly, what we can do to continue all this good work.

Lianne: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be on the Fact Roundtable podcast.

Caroline: Before we wrap up today, I would just like to say thank you to the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology for their kind sponsorship of FAACT's Roundtable Podcast and for their support over the years. Thank you for listening to FAACT's Roundtable Podcast. Stay tuned for future episodes coming soon. Please subscribe, leave a review and listen to our podcast on Pandora, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio and Stitcher. Have a great day and always be kind to one another.