Local Teenager Is Working to ‘Make America Healthy Again’

By MONICA CALZOLARI
ONEONTA

Devin Sailer, a rising senior at Oneonta High School, has a busy summer ahead. He will be representing New York State from May 29 through June 1 as the recipient of the 2025 American Spirit Award.

Each year, one student from each state and the District of Columbia who embody the American spirit of leadership, teamwork, tolerance, creativity and perseverance is selected for the Billy Michal Student Leadership Award. Sailer will travel to New Orleans, all expenses paid, for this opportunity.

Billy Michal was a 6-year-old boy during World War II who helped contribute to the victory of the U.S. by collecting scrap metal. Sailer will receive behind-the-scenes access to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

Dr. Vanessa Parisi, DO, an obstetrician gynecologist at Bassett Healthcare Network in Cooperstown, nominated him for this award. Sailer’s mother, Frances Sailer, is a nurse midwife at Bassett.

Early Political Success

After many trips to the emergency room with his mother by his side, Sailer fought for a price cap for the life-saving drug epinephrine, and won.

Sailer has 31 life-threating allergies and has been a fierce advocate for better awareness and protection from the dangers of food allergies for many years. He is only 17 years old.

Sailer is also allergic to bees and other stinging insects and carries an EpiPen, which used to cost $300.00-$600.00, pending health insurance coverage.

Thanks in large part to Sailer, New York legislators have passed a bill capping the price of an epinephrine auto-injector two-pack at $100.00 beginning on January 1, 2026.

There is also a bill at the federal level—the EPIPEN Act (Epinephrine’s Pharma Inflated Price Ends Now Act), introduced by Representatives Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Maxwell Frost (D-FL)—which aims to cap the out-of-pocket costs of epinephrine auto-injectors, like EpiPens, at $60.00 per two-pack for those with employer-based or individually purchased health insurance.

The EpiPen bill states that “ephinephrine is the only way to manage an anaphylactic attack.” By having a monopoly on this branded product, pharmaceutical companies have driven up the price “more than 400 percent since 2007,” according to www.foodallergy.org.

Making America Healthy Again

Because of his medical condition, Sailer became interested in politics. He sees it as a way to change laws to protect others who suffer from allergies. He is a supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, and the “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

Sailer said “RFK Jr. is more vaccine skeptical than I am. One of his cousins suffers from food allergies like me. He is a firm supporter of people with allergies.”

Being allergic to many different kinds of nuts, including peanuts, Sailer avoids eating out much. The food industry in the U.S. uses a lot of peanut oil and unhealthy additives that may send Sailer to the hospital.

American Legion Boys State

A one-week-long program that immerses rising high-school seniors in citizenship and leadership training is called American Legion Boys State.

Sailer applied, interviewed and was accepted into this prestigious program. Gary Coopman and a few other veterans from American Legion Post 259 interviewed Sailer. They selected him and several others to attend Boys State this summer.

Post 259 sponsors these young men so they can learn how local, county and state government operates. Activities include legislative sessions, court proceedings, law-enforcement presentations, assemblies, bands, choruses, and recreational programs.

Sailer will live on the campus of SUNY Morrisville for one week starting June 29 along with other participants.

“I think Boys State will be a difficult experience. A good kind of difficult,” Sailer said.

Boys State also includes some bootcamp-like physical activity mixed with traditional learning.
Because of his severe allergies, Sailer is ineligible for military service.

Visiting Northwestern University

Sailer is an ambassador to the Consortium for Food Allergy Research. He has been invited to Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He’ll be in Chicago from July 27 through August 2 for hands-on training about food allergies and as a participant in leadership training. CoFAR was established in 2005 to support clinical research on food allergies.

“Some people compare my food allergies with being lactose intolerant. If I eat a food I am allergic to, I can die,” Sailer said.

“I remember as a child there were no labels on food and no ingredients listed on restaurant menus. In the last 10 years, there is much more awareness about allergies.”

Each year, 150-200 people die from allergic reactions to food. Food allergies send 30,000 people to emergency rooms every year and cause 2,000 hospitalizations, according to an article dated 2004 on foodallergy.org.

Many vegans and vegetarians substitute nuts for meat protein. Sailer is extremely allergic to all nuts, peanut sauces and peanut oils.

Exposure to peppermint, shellfish, several environmental allergies, multiple medications and stinging insects can be fatal to Sailer.

“Europeans are ahead of the curve when it comes to regulating against the sale of hyper-processed foods,” Sailer said. “In the U.S., chickens have doubled in size over the last 100 years. We eat chlorinated chicken!”

“We have a strong meat lobby in the U.S and a strong farmer lobby and a strong pharmaceutical lobby,” he continued. “We need to be very careful.”

Sailer admires RF Kennedy Jr.’s focus on public health to “Make America Healthy Again.” He shares RFK’s concerns about the many additives like artificial dyes that American manufacturers are permitted to use in their production of highly-processed foods.

Sailer likes to quote his uncle, Carl Falotico, who is a city judge in Schenectady, New York.
“You have to have everything in moderation, including moderation,” his uncle says often.