Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder: The Importance of a Multidisciplinary Approach in Assessment and Management

Rosan completed her degree in dietetics in South Africa in 1996 and finished her MSc in 2004 and PhD at Imperial College London in 2008. She was the principal research dietitian at Great Ormond Street Hospital until December 2015, and after this worked with the allergy team at St. Thomas’ Hospital until 2018. 

Rosan has a busy paediatric dietetic practice in London specialising in food hypersensitivity and aversive eating and has published numerous articles and books. She is currently honorary reader and module leader for the Food Hypersensitivity Module of the MSc in Allergy at Imperial College and is visiting Professor at KU Leuven, on their MSc on Deglutology and University of Winchester on their anthropometry and ARFID module. She is also the chair of the European Academy of Allergy & Clinical Immunology (EAACI) Allied Health and Primary Section, and chair of the International Network for Diet and Nutrition in Allergy (INDANA) and is a Trustee for ARFID Awareness UK.

Dr Gillian Harris has carried out research into infant and child feeding behaviour and appetite regulation at the University of Birmingham, School of Psychology, for the past 38 years. She was also a Consultant Paediatric Clinical Psychologist for 30 years, and led a feeding clinic at The Children’s Hospital, Birmingham where she worked with infants and children who were food averse. She now runs a private clinical service for children and adults with Avoidant and Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) many of whom have co-morbid ASD or ADHD. 

Her specific research and clinical interests are the development of food acceptance and rejection in early infancy and later childhood, and the effect of early experience on later food preferences. She has written around 100 published papers, articles, and book chapters on these areas, and has been awarded multiple research grants to support her research. She has also made many media appearances, both on television and radio in the UK. Her latest book, on Food Refusal and Avoidant Eating in Children, was published in 2018.

Sarah Mason is a Speech and Language Therapist who has worked in the field of childhood feeding difficulties for over thirty years. She worked at Birmingham Children’s Hospital for twenty years, providing clinical services to inpatients and outpatients with feeding and swallowing difficulties. Together with Dr Gillian Harris, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Sarah helped set up a joint feeding clinic at Birmingham Children’s Hospital in 1998. Through this work, she encountered children with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) and developed an understanding of why children refuse foods. Sarah also developed a particular interest in children who are hard to wean off tube feeding, and this became the focus of her MPhil completed in 2006 at the School of Psychology, University of Birmingham. 

Following her retirement from the NHS, Sarah is continuing her interest in feeding difficulties through teaching and consulting work. She is a contributor to the Winchester University short course ‘ARFID: An Introduction to diagnosis and management’ and, with Dr Gillian Harris, has provided training on childhood food refusal and ARFID to many professionals in the UK and Ireland.