Allergy Awareness Week: Pledge your support to improve allergy services at primary care level

Research conducted by Allergy UK among the allergic community and published last year reveals that 65% of respondents want specialist allergy nurses in GP surgeries. Over the last year, we have been focused on finding a way to bring this solution to decision-makers.

Since July 2022, NHS England replaced the Clinical Commissioning Groups – groups of GP practices which looked at the needs of their patients to determine which services to provide – with Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) as part of the roll-out of 42 regional Integrated Care Systems (ICS) in England. NHS Scotland, NHS Wales and NHS Northern Ireland have been working with health boards for a while. In England, each ICS has an ICB, which is the NHS organisation responsible for developing a services plan for their area to meet the health needs of the community, manage the NHS budget and provide health services. The responsibility for commissioning allergy services now falls to each ICB in England.

This change in structure brings an opportunity to redesign the services available for the allergic community. At Allergy UK, we believe that if each NHS Integrated Care Board or equivalent in the UK had at least one specialist allergy nurse and dietitian within its region, those living with allergy would be able to access better quality care, advice and support in a timelier manner.

For this reason, our focus for Allergy Awareness Week this April is to launch this call which is central to the Right to Quality Care as laid out in our Patient Charter.

Please visit our new digital destination to pledge your support for this call. You can also find template letters to send to your MP, example social media posts and more information on our call, an updated overview of the state of provision for allergy services in the UK and more information on our Patient Charter.

Please help us make our call heard; the more people who support our call, the louder our collective voice is for decision-makers.

Pledge your support!