Implementing Food Referrals for Equity and Sustained Health

Overview

Food insecurity (FI) disproportionately affects those who have been historically marginalized and significantly contributes to poor health outcomes. In children, FI is associated with lower psychosocial functioning and academic achievement. It also contributes to the development of adverse health outcomes such as obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), cardiovascular disease (CVD), and Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD). Improving the diet quality of children (e.g., decreasing fat intake, increasing fruits and vegetables (FV) and fiber intake) has been associated with lower fasting serum glucose, insulin, LDL cholesterol, non-HDL cholesterol, and reduced risk of CVD later in life. Increasing awareness and access to programs that promote food equity by providing affordable healthy produce is a promising way to improve health outcomes and empower patients and communities to achieve better health and well-being. The goal of this proposal is to refine and optimize implementation strategies that connect families to community-based food security nutrition support programs through health care systems or medical clinics. The investigators will develop a multi-disciplinary, cross-sector collaboration to optimize current processes and workflows that integrate food security nutrition support programs into the healthcare system. The investigators will also work to develop a closed-loop communication system between the healthcare and healthy food access systems to support greater patient autonomy and self-efficacy to obtain, prepare, and consume healthy foods.

The investigators will conduct a pilot type 2 hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial of the I-FRESH (Implementing Food Referrals for Equity and Sustained Health) program using a Roll-Out Implementation Optimization (ROIO) design among families with children with nutrition-related illnesses who receive Medicaid or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. The I-FRESH program, the food security nutrition support program, will be refined prior to the first clinic roll-out based on input from several hospital, clinical, and community stakeholders. The program will involve 4 main components: screening and identification of families experiencing food insecurity (FI); social worker/care navigator-led discussions with families to determine need and readiness to receive support; referrals and assistance to engage with these programs; and follow-up assessments to determine fit, track utilization, and determine need for additional referrals. With each roll-out into a new clinic, modified implementation procedures and work-flows will be evaluated using implementation and effectiveness outcomes.