A pediatric feeding disorder is not the first medical condition to result in varying diagnoses. Nor will it be the last. But Shannon Goldwater is committed to the goal of minimizing the number of times that happens when it comes to this serious medical challenge, after having gone through an experience no parent – or their child – should have to face.
Goldwater and her husband’s lives were changed when their triplets’ lives were in danger of ending. After the premature infants, born in 2002, survived complicated surgeries, they then began a perilous struggle with pediatric feeding disorders. Seeking medical care for pediatric feeding disorders was frustrating. Diagnoses varied as did the treatments, which produced inconsistent results.
“They were born four months premature,” Goldwater says. “We were then totally unaware of pediatric feeding disorders. The children just didn’t eat. And certainly at that point if you said a child didn’t eat you would think they were severely impaired. I never even knew that eating could be a problem, or that it could become such a big part of our lives. It really took over our lives. We were worried about them surviving. For the first eight years of our children’s lives there wasn’t a single day [without a problem].”
After several years of unending medical challenges, in 2006 Goldwater founded the Scottsdale, Arizona-based “Feeding Matters” organization that promotes advances against pediatric feeding disorders by accelerating identification and accurate diagnoses from the get-go and then promotes research and care. She wanted to help others avoid the arduous journey her family has traveled by combining the efforts of other families, medical professionals, feeding therapists and engaged volunteers.
Make no mistake, she has helped.
Feeding Matters began with Goldwater and three other volunteers. The organization now annually reaches more than 65,000 people – family members and medical professionals.
Goldwater is one of four most-deserving 2017 finalists for The NASCAR Foundation’s Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award Presented by Nationwide. The award honors NASCAR fans who are also accomplished volunteers working for children’s causes in their communities throughout the United States. It also honors the memory and the philanthropic legacy of the foundation’s late founder, Betty Jane France, who passed away last August.
Goldwater is a volunteer leader who has provided more than 7,000 hours of service since Feeding Matters’ inception, having personally mentored more than 100 families dealing with pediatric feeding disorders, connecting them with resources, providing emotional support and perhaps most importantly, ensuring that their voices are heard by medical professionals.
She has a link to another leader in her home state. Her husband Bob is the great nephew of the late Barry Goldwater, the longtime United States Senator from Arizona who was the 1964 Republican presidential nominee.
