Katja Rowell MD is a family doctor, author, and responsive feeding specialist. She attended the University of Michigan Medical School and was part of Ellyn Satter’s clinical faculty. Described as “academic, but warm and down to earth,” Rowell believes that helping children grow up to have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies is preventive medicine. She has a special interest in supporting adoptive and fostering families through a trauma-informed lens. Rowell is part of an interdisciplinary group working towards defining, researching, and having conversations around the Responsive Feeding Therapy framework.

Her books include, Helping Your Child When Mealtimes are Hard, Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating,  Love Me, Feed Me: The Foster and Adoptive Parent’s Guide to Responsive Feeding, and Conquer Picky Eating, a workbook for teens and adults. Rowell enjoys camping with her family and cooking.

Learn more at www.thefeedingdoctor.com

Markus Wilken is a psychologist and director of the Feeding Tube Dependency Institute. Trained in clinical and developmental psychology at the University of Osnabrueck and in Infant Mental Health at the University of Graz. During his PhD he was studying feeding disorder in high-risk premature infants. Over the past decades he has established a self-regulated treatment for feeding disorder and feeding tube weaning for medical fragile children. He has shown that medical fragile small children can be successfully tube weaned in home-based settings. In several research projects, this program has shown to be safe and effective with a success rate of 90 %. Markus has teached this method worldwide in hands-on training sessions. Most recently Markus is focusing on prevention and intervention of pediatric medical traumatic stress, to prevent long-term feeding tube dependency.

Markus Wilken, PhD
Developmental Psychologist
contact@tubweaningathome.com

Gülsum Kilic is a psychological and health consultant at SomaPsyk Terapi based in Copenhagen/Denmark.

She holds a professional degree in Occupational Therapy from University College Copenhagen (KP), a BSc in Psychology, and a MSc in Health Promotion from Roskilde University. She specializes in feeding therapy for atypical eaters, including children and adolescents with ASD, ADHD, and multisensory processing challenges. Gülsüm has extensive experience with ARFID and PFD and is certified in the SOS Approach to Feeding and trained in OPT. Her work integrates sensory-motor and psychological strategies with a focus on food expansion, volume tolerance, and nutritional adequacy. She is also an experienced speaker and course instructor in the fields of neurodiversity and eating disorders.

Beyond the Tube: Understanding Pediatric Feeding Disorder (PFD), Avoiding/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), and Food Neophobia in Pediatric Feeding Challenges
This presentation explores the clinical overlap and distinctions between Pediatric Feeding Disorder (PFD), Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), and food neophobia in children with complex feeding difficulties. Through clinical examples and evidence-informed strategies, the talk highlights how these conditions can contribute to tube dependency and what multidisciplinary approaches can support food expansion, nutritional adequacy, and psychological well-being in atypical eaters.

Clea Petreman received her bachelor’s degree in Occupational Therapy from The University of British Columbia, in Canada, in 1996. She started her career working with youth on a spinal cord injury rehabilitation unit in Vancouver. In 2000, she moved to Denmark, where she worked as an assistant for children with special needs in Danish daycares, while learning the language and completing her Danish authorization. Clea received her Masters of Science in Occupational Therapy from Dalhousie University in 2005 and began work as a pediatric occupational therapist on the traumatic head injury unit at Hvidovre Hospital. The last 10 years have been spent working at a pediatric center just outside of Copenhagen. Clea was educated in the SOS Approach to Feeding in 2016 and has specialized in supporting children with feeding challenges and their families since then.

Clea will present an overview of the Sequential Oral Sensory Approach to Feeding, a transdisciplinary program developed in USA and designed to assess and treat children experiencing difficulties with feeding and/or weight/growth. The focus of the presentation will be on how the SOS Approach have been adapted to fit into the context of the Danish health care system and the use in everyday clinical practice.

Ghita Brekke and Sarah Bøg Sørensen has worked for years in the field of dietary therapy for children and adolescents with neurological impairment at Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen. Within this area they have conducted two scooping reviews. The first about children with CP and anthropometry/nutritional screening and the second about neurological impaired children and blenderized tube feeding. The latest article resulted in the book: ‘SondemadsKonceptet’, which is about how you create your own blenderized tube feeding. 

This session will be about blenderized tube feeding. First, we will look in to the scientific background for the book ‘SondemadsKonceptet’. Further on, present how the concept from the book guides you through the steps of deciding when and how to use blenderized tube feeding. How you can create it by yourself and which precautions you need to pay attention to.