Why Early Childhood Allergy Prevention (ECAP)?

Up to 20% of the children suffer from allergic diseases including asthma and hay fever. Apart from direct and indirect costs, allergic diseases are often accompanied by a severe impairment of quality of life. This concerns not only the children themselves but also the personal and/or family environment. Early childhood allergy prevention (ECAP) is therefore considered as a domain of high Public Health relevance, also due to the current paradigm change of allergen avoidance to induction of tolerance.

In the light of these challenges, there is, in particular, a need to:

• To emphasize on factors which hamper a sound health decision
• To consider social, ecological and systemic determinants which influence health literacy and subsequent heath decisions
• The evaluation of the significance of scientific knowledge as well as professional expertise about strengthening health literacy
• The development of appropriate instruments for the assessment/measuring of health literacy