The policy report summarises insights and recommendations from Global Policy Network’s United Kingdom (UK) Allergy Policy Series Roundtable One, held on the 13th of March 2026. The session, titled “Closing the Gaps in CMPA: Prevention, Timely Diagnosis and Equitable Access to Care”, brought together paediatric allergy specialists, dietitians, health visitors, pharmacists, commissioners and patient advocates to examine how CMPA is currently recognised and managed across the system, and how these pathways shape long‑term allergic risk and inequality of access to care.

The roundtable highlighted that CMPA must move from being treated as an individual clinician problem to being addressed as a complex system‑wide condition embedded within early‑years, primary‑care and allergy pathways, directly reinforcing the NHS Long Term Plan’s emphasis on prevention, early intervention and reducing the burden of long-term conditions. In that way, CMPA was framed as an early-life condition where timely recognition and management can prevent avoidable harm, reduce progression along the atopic march and avoid high-cost care throughout life. Operational, workforce and governance constraints currently hinder this shift. Indeed, delayed and uneven diagnosis, fragmented ownership between services, and weak data on allergy activity generate avoidable harm for children and families and amplify existing inequalities in access to care. At the same time, front‑line professionals who are pivotal to CMPA care often lack the time and training needed to deliver consistent, culturally appropriate advice.

Against this backdrop, CMPA offers a concrete opportunity for the DHSC, ICBs and local authorities to operationalise national prevention ambitions by acting earlier in infancy to alter long-term allergic trajectories, reduce avoidable healthcare use and narrow inequalities. CMPA, therefore becomes a concrete test of how far national ambitions on prevention and tackling inequality in key documents such as the NHS Long Term Plan are being translated into everyday practice for infants and young children. This report identifies insights and recommendations on CMPA diagnosis, inequality and pathway design and sets out actionable recommendations for the DHSC, ICBs, local authorities, professional bodies, and education partners.