3 Ways Food Is Medicine Network Will Drive Change

Bringing greater rigor and focus to food is medicine programs — which use food to prevent, manage or treat certain medical conditions — has been gaining momentum.

Take the case of the recently launched Food is Medicine National Network of Excellence at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Boston.

The network will develop, convene and share best practices in Food is Medicine (FIM) to improve well-being, improve health outcomes and increase efficiency in health care. But perhaps more importantly, the organization and its founders, including Kaiser Permanente and six others, aim to standardize efforts to use food to treat specific medical conditions and chronic diseases.

3 Guiding Principles for the New Network

The network will collaborate to integrate nutritional interventions that both transform and adapt to existing treatment models, use the latest in research and training to enhance patient care and education as well as raise rates of patient buy-in and participation. The network will pursue three interconnected priorities.

1. Members will develop frameworks to assess the impact of FIM interventions, measuring health outcomes and cost-effectiveness.
2. The network will share insights and identify opportunities to optimize program design and delivery.
3. Members will promote the effectiveness of food is medicine through field engagement and communication with policymakers and the public.

The network’s other founding members, including CVS Health, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Devoted Health, Elevance Health, Geisinger and Highmark Health, will support this effort.

Emerging research suggests that food-based policies and programs — such as medically tailored meals, produce prescriptions and nutrition education — can reduce diet-related medical conditions and associated health care costs, Tufts officials note. Those costs are significant.

Each year, suboptimal diets and food insecurity result in more than 500,000 deaths and cost the U.S. economy $1.1 trillion in health care costs and lost productivity, said Dariush Mozaffarian, cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. By working together with its partners and others in the field, the institute plans to scale evidence-based nutritional interventions that will drive change and improve health while reducing disparities.

Organizations like Boston Medical Center (BMC), winner of the 2024 AHA Foster G. McGaw Prize for Excellence in Community Service, have been working to address these issues.

BMC’s Preventive Food Pantry, founded in 2001, works to address nutrition-related illness and under-nutrition for its low-income patients and patients with cancer, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other chronic conditions. Individuals with special nutritional needs are referred to the pantry by BMC primary care providers who write prescriptions for supplemental foods that promote physical health, prevent future illness and facilitate recovery.

Investments Flow to FIM Efforts

In addition, earlier this year the National Institutes of Health awarded a five-year $3.8 million grant to Case Western Reserve University in partnership with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, University Hospitals (UH) of Cleveland and MetroHealth Medical Center to provide health and support to low-income pregnant women. The Nourishing Tomorrow program will study 360 food-insecure pregnant patients from UH and MetroHealth.

The funding will provide one of the first comprehensive, rigorous studies of medically tailored groceries as an approach to reduce food insecurity and improve both maternal and baby health outcomes.

Elsewhere, the Food is Medicine Coalition, an association of community-based nonprofit food providers, last year released a 32-page FIM accreditation standard that focuses largely on medically tailored meals.

The stringent requirements call for organizations to have one accredited full-time dietitian on staff for every 1,000 clients they serve. Accredited organizations can’t serve any foods with artificial sweeteners, preservatives or anything ultra-processed. They also are directed to cook foods in a way that “preserves the nutrient value of the food,” such as by “baking, braising and sautéing rather than frying.”

The investment community also seems to be taking notice of advances in personalized nutrition.

Fay

A nutrition startup that connects individuals with insurance-covered registered dietitians who provide personalized nutrition and lifestyle counseling, recently raised a $50 million series B round by Goldman Sachs at a $500 million valuation. Existing investors General Catalyst and Forerunner also participated in the round.

Berry Street

This startup developed a nutrition counseling program for consumers and has a network of 1,000 registered dietitians. It secured a $50 million investment from Northzone, Sofina, FJ Labs, the founder of Revolut, a co-founder of Spring Health, a co-founder of Grow Therapy and the CEO of Found, among others. The funds will help the company add to its provider network and its suite of provider AI tools to "drive better health outcomes for patients.”