Kayleen Savonn Brown — a 17-year-old from Jacksonville with a severe nut allergy — was at a group meeting at Atlantic Coast High School in April 2023 when she was served baklava. Unfamiliar with the dessert, she asked school staff if it was nut-free and was told that it was, according to a lawsuit filed by Steven Brown, her father.
Chopped nuts are a principal ingredient of baklava.
Kayleen ate the dessert and shortly afterward “discovered that the food she had consumed contained pistachio nuts,” according to the complaint.
Kayleen began to experience symptoms of a reaction. According to the suit, employees of the Duval County Public School district “were aware that she had eaten nuts and was experiencing symptoms associated with her food allergy and permitted her to leave campus” instead of bringing her to the nurse to have her condition evaluated.
The teen drove from school to a local pharmacy to buy Benadryl, but upon her arrival, she suffered full-blown anaphylaxis and cardiac arrest.
Anaphylaxis is a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction to a food, drug, insect venom, or substance, like latex.
Kayleen subsequently fell into a coma and died three days later on April 30, 2023.
Mr Brown blames the district, which, he says, knew of her severe allergy because they had filed a Food Allergy Management and Prevention Plan for her.
The plan requires staff to be trained to recognize and report signs of an allergic reaction and to not allow students with food allergies to ‘walk alone to the school nurse or permitted to ride the school bus,’ according to the complaint.
The school did not follow the plan, which provided ‘guidelines to ensure a safe and healthy educational environment for students with life-threatening food allergies,’ as employees ‘breached its duty’ to Kayleen, according to the filing.
The suit further claims that the school district failed to train its employees on food allergen procedures and did not follow the food allergy plan for his daughter.
The father is suing the Duvall County Public School District for unspecified damages exceeding $50,000 due to the ‘direct and proximate result’ of DCPS’ negligence, seeking compensation for her medical bills, funeral expenses, lost income, and the parents’ suffering.
In an interview with News4JAX, Mr Brown said:
My immediate thing was, you know, “Why did she leave school? Or why was she allowed to leave school if the teacher was aware that she was having an allergic reaction?”
My first thing would be like, “Why wasn’t 911 called?”
A spokesperson for DCPS told DailyMail.com:
We are very sorry to hear about the tragic passing of this young person, and our sympathies go out to the family.
Because this matter appears to involve pending litigation, any district response will come within the context of the judicial proceedings.
Here follows the local news report from News4JAX on Kayleen’s passing and the subsequent lawsuit:
Kayleen’s grandmother established a GoFundMe page to help pay the teen’s medical bills. You can read her obituary and see a slideshow of her childhood here.
We send our deepest sympathies to the Brown family, who are living through the trauma and loss every food allergy family fears the most. We hope a successful conclusion of this lawsuit will bring some measure of closure to the family.
When we report such tragedies, we look for strategies others in the food allergy community can employ to avoid similar occurrences.
If the lawsuit is indicative of events that took the life of Kayleen, the school did everything wrong, from advising Kayleen that baklava did not contain nuts — a dish based on nuts — to allowing the girl to leave school while suffering a reaction instead of calling the school nurse and emergency services. It is evident the Emergency Action Plan that was filed with the district was never consulted or implemented.
We strongly advise you to avoid eating unpackaged food outside the home unless you know the ingredients and that it was safely made to avoid cross-contact with your allergens.
Next, understand that epinephrine is the only drug that can halt and reverse the progression of anaphylaxis, but it must be administered soon after the onset of symptoms to have the best effect.
At 17 years old, Kayleen was certainly old enough to self-carry and self-administer emergency epinephrine but we don’t know why she didn’t have it on hand when her symptoms of anaphylaxis began. Still, we urge all school districts to allow students to self-carry their emergency epinephrine and other rescue medications as soon as they are deemed responsible enough to do so to avoid having to delay administration to locate these medications, which are often locked away in the nurse’s station.
Kayleen’s search for Benadryl indicates that she was not adequately trained to use epinephrine first. As the American College of Allergy Asthma and Immunology states:
Antihistamines such as Benadryl are typically given orally, and they can take an hour to take effect. Epinephrine – the medication found in epinephrine auto injectors (EAIs) – is a shot that is injected in the leg muscle, and it works within minutes. An antihistamine will block histamine, but histamine is only one of the factors involved in a severe allergic reaction, so Benadryl is not an effective treatment. Any delay in treatment [with epinephrine] can increase the risk of hospitalization or death.
Everyone prescribed epinephrine should always take two emergency devices — auto-injectors or nasal sprays — with them everywhere, every time, and administer the first when they first suspect anaphylaxis.
Lastly, a person suffering from an allergic reaction should never drive themself in search of treatment because they can lose consciousness.
