Feeding Tube Awareness Week

In 2011, Feeding Tube Awareness launched the first annual Feeding Tube Awareness Week®. The mission of Awareness Week is to promote the positive benefits of feeding tubes as life saving medical interventions. The week also serves to educate the broader public about the medical reasons that children and adults are tube fed, the challenges that families face, and day-to-day life with tube feeding. Feeding Tube Awareness Week® connects families, by showing how many other families are going through similar things, and making people feel less alone. 

The second week in February was selected because of it's proximity to Valentine's Day since we love our tubes. It can be challenging to have a lot of negativity surrounding the medical device that is keeping you, your child, or your loved one alive. This week, in particular, is an opportunity to embrace the positives and be thankful that it helps people to live, grow and thrive.

Each year, we encourage parents, caregivers, and people with feeding tubes to participate in the week by posting in social media, blogging, emailing or making videos about the different topics areas for the week. A number of parents have contacted local media and gotten their story heard. A number of parents, siblings and children who are tube fed gave presentations at their schools.

Thousands have participated in Feeding Tube Awareness Week® and it continues to grow each year. In 2015, we reached more than 1.6 million people with content just from the Feeding Tube Awareness Facebook page. Millions more were reached through TV, newspapers, online media, websites, blogs, Facebook posts, tweets and outreach from companies and organizations.

About Feeding Tubes

Feeding tubes are simply an alternate way of receiving nutrition for children or adults who are unable to eat by mouth, or who are unable to receive enough nutrition from oral eating. To find out more about feeding tubes, visit Feeding Tube Awareness.

Statistics about Tube Feeding:

The Feeding Tube Awareness Foundation has identified over 300 conditions that can require children to need nutritional support through tube feeding. We are certain that this list is incomplete. See the Condition List.

According to Halyard, makers of the MIC-KEY button enteral feeding tube, “To date, roughly half a million people in the United States rely on feeding tubes and that number is expected to rise by eight percent over the next three years." – Thriving with a Feeding Tube, EndoNurse, December 2012

A decade ago (2003) there were about 344,000 U.S. residents using feeding tubes in their homes, according to the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.  

Based on the following information, the Feeding Tube Awareness Foundation estimates that children 18 and under represent approximately 20% of the enterally fed (tube fed) population. According to the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) 2007 data, of the 39,541,948 weighted patient discharges from short stay hospitals, approximately 246,999 patients received EN during their hospital stay. Results from that same database indicate that there were more than 188,000 procedures for percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube placement. A PEG is a more permanent type of feeding tube, the placement of which indicates the need for an enteral feeding regimen for an extended period of time. Of the patients who had a PEG tube placed during their inpatient hospital stay, approximately 68% were 65 years of age and older and 69% had Medicare as their primary payor. 

About Feeding Tube Awareness Foundation

Feeding Tube Awareness was founded in 2010 as a means of supporting parents of children who are tube-fed and raising positive awareness of tube feeding as a life saving medical intervention. We are a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Our organization is run 100% by volunteers.

The logo “I heart a Tubie” is a symbol of embracement. Tube feeding is often misunderstood and parents can face negativity as a consequence. Hundreds of thousands of infants and children are able to live, grow and thrive because of tube feeding. Parents are not alone, even though they can feel they are.

Our website is dedicated to providing pragmatic information for parents on day-to-day life with child who is tube fed. The Facebook group offers real-time support and knowledge sharing among thousands of parents and supporters. The group’s annual Feeding Tube Awareness Week®, held the second week of February, has gained support of news media, online media, corporations and organizations focused on tube feeding.

In April 2014, we launched "What You Need to Know Now, A Parent's Introduction to Tube Feeding." It contains the information you need to know for all types of nasal and gastric feeding tubes, questions to ask, and what you need to learn before transitioning home. It is all the information that we, as parents, wished we had early on.