Enhancing the Effectiveness of Home-delivery Based Produce Prescription Program Implementation Strategies

The University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston200 enrolled

Overview

Harris Health System is currently participating, along with two other partners, GoldiFresh Inc., and Brighter Bites, in a cross-sector collaborative home delivery-based Produce Prescription Program (PPRx) pilot initiative that provides consistent access to healthy food plus nutrition education to Medicaid-eligible pregnant women in Harris County, TX, deemed to be at high risk of adverse pregnancy or birth outcomes. The objectives of this study are two-fold: (a) to examine utilization of food basket contents and improvements in diet quality in this home delivery based PPRx program, and (b) to evaluate if and the extent to which utilization of food basket contents outcomes improves with support from an interactive AI-based conversational agent to convert food into healthy meals.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

200

Conditions

Nutritional Deficiency in Pregnancy

Interventions

Participants will receive biweekly deliveries of 20 lbs (\~50 servings) of fresh produce (8-10 different kinds of produce) plus standard nutrition education materials consisting of nutrition education infographics inside of the produce prescription boxes as well as online videos, recipes, and nutrition tips accessed via Quick Response (QR) code.

Eligibility

Sex: FEMALEMin age: 18 YearsMax age: 44 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * receiving prenatal care at high-risk obstetric clinics * \<= 20 weeks medically-confirmed viable pregnancy * designated as high risk \[Age\>=35 years, or obese or overweight (BMI\>=25.0 at pre pregnancy self-report), or prior history of pregnancy hypertension or gestational diabetes\] * within the zip code delivery radius Exclusion Criteria: * women who were medically recommended bed rest through pregnancy * substance users

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Change in consumption of home-delivered produce from baseline to 6 months

7 point rating scale ranging from 0=none to 6=all, assessing what proportion of delivered produce was consumed over the past two weeks.

Time frame: Measures will be collected at baseline, and 6 times at random intervals over the next 6 months

Change in usual consumption of fruits and vegetables from baseline to 6 months

Fruit and vegetable consumption scale, measured by NCI dietary screener. Scale includes multiple sources of fruit and vegetables in diet, and is scored in terms of cups of fruit / day, and cups of vegetables / day

Time frame: Measures will be collected at baseline, and after 6 months of exposure to program