Nutrition to Optimize, Understand, and Restore Insulin Sensitivity in HIV for Oklahoma

Overview

The NOURISH-OK Study will identify how food insecurity contributes to insulin resistance, an important surrogate marker of many co-morbidities in HIV disease, using an integrated framework to identify key leverage points for insulin resistance. Drawing from these pathways, this study will adapt and evaluate a community-driven, science-informed "food as medicine" intervention designed to lower insulin resistance through healthy food access, food utilization skills, and other self-care behaviors. Knowledge gained from this study can benefit those living with HIV through the prevention and more effective management of pre-diabetes, diabetes, obesity, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The community-based participatory research study will be conducted in Oklahoma, and include HIV-positive individuals living in urban and rural communities. The first two aims are observational, the third aim will test an intervention. Aim 1: Test and refine a conceptual integrated framework of food insecurity and insulin resistance to identify significant structural, social, behavioral, and biological pathways as candidate intervention points. This aim will be accomplished using a cross-sectional survey (n=410 final sample size) and a one-month observational sub-study from the main study sample (n=89 final sample size) to collect intensive measures of dietary intake and gut microbiome samples. Aim 2: Adapt a home-delivered grocery and cooking self-care NOURISH-OK intervention to address key nutrition disparities and other health risk behaviors identified as significant path contributors to insulin resistance among people living with HIV. This aim will be achieved through a series of interviews and focus groups with people living with HIV who are food insecure (n=45 qualitative study subjects, including interviews and focus groups). Aim 3: Implement the 12-week NOURISH-OK intervention and assess it for feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary impact using a randomized wait-list control design (n=234). This study will use a simple randomized wait-list control trial design. Additionally, the investigators will invite a random selection from the main study sample (n=80) to participate in more intensive data collection, including multiple 24-hr food recalls and stool samples during the intervention period to assess for food insecurity, dietary, and gut microbiome changes throughout the intervention periods.