The Children’s Hospital at Westmead is the largest paediatric centre in NSW, providing
the most advanced care and treatment options for sick and injured children from NSW, Australia and across the Pacific Rim. Each year the hospital’s services manage 51,000 inpatient admissions, 92,000 Emergency Department presentations and more than one million outpatient service visits.
Challenge: One of the hospital’s Senior Paediatric Dietitians, Barbara Dennison, was frustrated by the lack of suitable information available for the families of children she was treating with multiple food allergies. This was against a backdrop of Australia having one of the highest rates of allergic disorders in the world. Barbara was keen to develop an allergy cookbook to support patients’ families and the wider food-allergic community of Australia and beyond.
Steps: Julie Nance listened to Barbara’s ideas and was excited by the challenge. She:
- Worked with Barbara on the initial development of the book’s structure including non-recipe topics such as general nutrition; allergy shopping; preventing cross-contamination at home; and anaphylaxis
- Developed an allergy cookbook proposal for submission to publishers
- Helped secure a publishing agent and an international publishing deal with Hachette Australia
- Edited content and submitted the completed manuscript to the publisher
Outcome: The paediatric-focused Australasian allergy cookbook was published in early 2013 –
written by Barbara; Fiona Wedding, Consultant Home Economist; and Dr Preeti Joshi, Specialist Paediatrician in Allergy and Immunology. The book has supported countless families including time-poor parents with limited cooking skills, grandparents, carers and child care centres catering for individual dietary needs.