Knowledge of Infant Peanut Introduction Improves Following Training Modules

Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH

A new investigation into peanut introduction guidelines in pediatric allergy care found that a training video improved pediatric clinician’s knowledge of the practice.

The data was presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting (AAAAI) 2022 during the session, “Pediatric Clinicians' Knowledge of Infant Peanut Introduction Guidelines Following iREACH Training Modules”.

In 2017, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Addendum Guidelines for the Prevention of Peanut Allergy recommended early introduction of food containing peanuts to infants.

However, barrier to implementing these guidelines were attributed to insufficient knowledge on peanut introduction practices.

As such, investigators led by Ruch Gupta, MD, MPH, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, measures the effectiveness of a training video to improve upon clinicians’ knowledge of the guidelines.

The Methods

The training video was developed as part of the Intervention to Reduce Early (Peanut) Allergy in Children or iREACH. The video was intended to increase pediatric clinician’s knowledge while also lowering the incidence of peanut allergy.

Gupta and colleagues enrolled pediatric clinicians from 19 practice sites across Illinois.

The iREACH training video summarized the NIAID guidelines, a clinical decisions support tool, as well as different classifications of eczema. From there, pediatric clinicians were tasked with completing a multiple-choice survey consisting of 7 clinical scenarios designed to access guideline knowledge before and after training.

Finally, differences in the percentage of pediatric clinicians who correctly answered each item were assessed both pre- and post-survey training via McNemar’s test.

The Findings

A total of 175 pediatric clinicians participated in the study, with 100% completing both the surveys and the training.

Prior to training, investigators observed that the percent of correct responses to each clinical scenario had ranged from 48% (prevention for infants with moderate eczema) to 87% (prevention for infants without eczema or food allergy).

However, after training the percentage of correct responses increased significantly for both scenarios (p<0.002), with knowledge on distinguishing moderate and severe eczema having increased the most after training.

Though the iREACH training video improved pediatric clinicians’ knowledge on the guidlelines for peanut introduction, Gupta and colleagues added that “Future efforts exploring knowledge retention following use of the training video is necessary”.