Key Milestones in the Quest for Celiac Awareness

• June 2003 – The National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (NFCA) is founded by Alice Bast, who was inspired to lead the charge for change by her own struggle with undiagnosed celiac and subsequent miscarriages, a stillbirth and a premature baby.

• March 9, 2004 – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards a Novel Approaches in Education grant to the NFCA, with Bast as principal investigator.
 
• June 28-30, 2004 – The first-ever NIH Consensus Development Conference on celiac is held. Bast participates in the conference to discuss the prevalence and treatment of celiac disease. The committee declares that celiac is far more common than once classified.

• August 3, 2004 – The Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act is signed into law. The new law, effective January 1, 2006, will provide information to help those in the restaurant and school foodservice industries better protect patrons and students with food allergies. Federal guidelines for “gluten-free” labeling were not included in the policy.

• July 14, 2005 and August 19, 2005 –Bast testifies before U. S. Food and Drug Administration about the need for national standards in labeling foods as “gluten-free” to keep food safe for consumption by the celiac community.

• January 2005 –Bast was invited to be a member of the NIH’s Ad Hoc Committee to raise awareness of celiac among the medical community. 

• September 2005 - Bast works with the NIH to revise their celiac fact sheet, which publicly declares that celiac is much more prevalent than previously thought.  The fact sheet becomes available to the general public and healthcare community through the NIH website.

• October 2005 –AT-1001, a new drug targeted at celiac disease, successfully completes Phase I trials and is awarded Fast Track status by the Food and Drug Administration.

• 2006 – The NFCA will launch a national public awareness campaign to better educate the public and the healthcare community about celiac disease. The overall goal of the campaign is to reduce the amount of time to proper diagnosis for undiagnosed and misdiagnosed celiac patients, and to promote the need for further research for a cure.

• 2007 – The NFCA will launch a research grant-making program designed to fund early stage research into celiac.  This program will be the much-needed “ stepping stone” for researchers to secure larger funding through the National Institutes of Health and other major funding sources.

• January 2008 - The deadline for the Food and Drug Administration to provide formal guidelines for “gluten-free” food labeling.