Medically Tailored Groceries and Food Resource Coaching

Study Summary

Eating healthy foods can help people manage health problems, like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Many people want to eat healthier, but changing eating behaviors is hard. Patients don't always know what foods to eat for their health problems and are hesitant to try foods that may be unfamiliar. These challenges are made more difficult when families have lower incomes, which makes accessing healthy foods difficult and trying new foods riskier when on a budget. Food is Medicine programs connect people to healthy foods that help them manage health problems. One example is a medically tailored grocery program. This program provides a patient with free groceries selected to help their medical condition. For example, a patient receives fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-salt, low-sugar foods if they have high blood pressure. Food resource coaching is another strategy for eating healthy food. This approach provides a coach that supports learning healthy eating habits when facing financial challenges by using available food resources. Among other strategies, a coach may teach the participant how to meal plan and shop at nearby stores to increase healthy and delicious eating patterns. In our study, the investigators will ask lower-income patients with at least one chronic health problem at a safety-net clinic if they want to participate in a Food is Medicine program. Patients that want to participate will be randomly placed in one of three groups. One group will get medically tailored groceries from a free food market for four months. Another group will get medically tailored groceries and food resource coaching from a free food market. The last group will get free food from the same market for four months, but food will not be medically tailored, and they will not meet with a coach. Participants will have the option to continue getting food from the market at the end of the study if they want to. This study will help us learn what patients think about Food is Med

Primary Outcome

Study administrative data recorded by the study team on the count of people enrolled in the study and the count of people that complete the study

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL Food resource coaching
• OTHER Free community food support
• BEHAVIORAL Medically tailored groceries

Study Locations (1)