Katherine, RD

As a Registered Dietitian who works in a pediatric outpatient gastroenterology and nutrition office, I routinely work with children who have some sort of gastrointestinal malfunction, allergy or intolerance. As a Registered Dietitian, it is me who often recommends special diets for these children to help manage or treat their condition. Unfortunately it makes my job much harder when coverage for these diets are limited or not available. As a nutrition expert, it should be up to me, the family and the healthcare team to decide on how best to treat these children and if nutrition is the ideal treatment, then it should be included as part of the child’s covered treatments. It is frustrating to have to delay or change care if nutrition therapy is not covered. This can worsen illness and also cause undue stress and harm to the child and their family. Furthermore, no coverage of a nutritional therapy many times means I can’t do my job. This means the child does not get the best care or opportunity for a successful treatment for their condition. Many times, there is no equivalent to the nutrition therapy and we are forced to potentially choose a sub optimal non-nutritional therapy that doesn’t work or causes worsening of the condition. I strongly urge you to support coverage of medical foods to ensure that my patients receive the recommended and best care to manage their condition!