Pediatric nutrition

Why choose Geisinger for pediatric nutrition?

Individualized nutrition planning: We make diet recommendations that can help your child, but not before completing individualized nutrition consultations.

Our consultations include:

• Growth evaluation
  
  • Assessment of nutrient intake and deficiencies
  • Formula/feeding recommendations
  • Tube-feeding regimens
  • Instruction on specialized/restrictive diets
• Tailored follow-up care: After working with your family to create a plan, we track growth and continue to provide help. We make adjustments as needed for tube-fed children and help them transition to taking food orally.
• Specialized clinic: Our team of pediatric dietitians, speech therapists and occupational therapists form a multidisciplinary feeding team to treat children with special needs. They help children with behavioral or sensory feeding disorders eat without devices such as feeding tubes. They also work with children who have developed food aversions or were intubated and need to learn to eat again.
• Convenience and coordination: Our dietitians regularly visit Geisinger locations throughout the region, providing outpatient nutrition evaluations with a doctor’s referral. That means you do not have to travel as far for care. For oral supplements and tube-feeding therapy, we collaborate with our Geisinger Home Infusion Services service and other providers covered by insurance.
• Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN): If your child needs nutrition delivered through their veins, we work closely with Geisinger pediatric gastroenterologists and our Geisinger Home Infusion Services home infusion suppliers. Together, we ensure your child receives the right nutritional support. Our team has received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to use Omegaven®, a fatty acid mixture to decrease the negative effects of IV nutrition on your child’s liver.
• Obesity prevention and management: We partner with Geisinger’s pediatric gastroenterology department and its Weigh of Life Program. This program brings together doctors, dietitians and nurse educators to prevent and manage childhood obesity. Learn more about pediatric gastroenterology and its anti-obesity program.
• Specialized diets: We work with pediatric neurologists to develop high fat, low-carb ketogenic diets for children with epilepsy and seizures. These diets help reduce the number of seizures, as well as their severity. (Learn more about pediatric neurology.) We also offer specialized services for patients with:
  
  • Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE), a chronic allergic disease of the esophagus
  • Mild to severe food allergies
  • Celiac disease, a sensitivity to the protein found in many grains