Feeding the family-a food is medicine intervention: Preliminary baseline results of clinical data from caregivers and children

Background/Objectives: Food is Medicine (FIM) programs have been shown to be effective at addressing food and nutrition insecurity among individuals. However, more evidence is needed to determine effective interventions at the household level and their impact on child health outcomes. Feeding the Family is a randomized controlled trial which aims to determine whether the amount of food provided and the ability to select foods in FIM interventions have an incremental effect on child and caregiver clinical outcomes relative to nutrition counseling alone. The objective of this paper is to describe the population at baseline among those enrolled in Feeding the Family, an FIM family intervention. 

Methods: A pragmatic randomized controlled trial (pRCT) with a 2 × 2 factorial study design was used at an urban primary care clinic. Participants were randomized into one of four arms for a 3-month intervention: (1) medically tailored meals (MTMs), (2) grocery prescription (GP), (3) combined MTMs + GP, and (4) delayed control. Primary outcomes consisted of child and caregiver biomarkers (BMI, blood pressure, A1c, LDL, and HDL). Secondary outcomes included child and caregiver dietary behaviors, nutrition security, and food security. Spearman correlations and Kruskal-Wallis rank sum tests determined correlations between caregiver and child biomarkers, as well as correlations between caregiver socioeconomic factors and child outcomes, respectively. 

Results: Thirty-one caregivers and fifty-one children were enrolled. Nearly 90% of caregivers reported low-very low household food security; 93.6% experienced ongoing financial strain. Several caregiver-child biomarker correlations were observed, including caregiver and child BMI (r = 0.59, p = 0.043), caregiver LDL and child A1c (r = -0.79, p = 0.004), and caregiver total cholesterol and child BMI (r = -0.62, p = 0.032). In addition, food assistance status was associated with child vegetable intake (H = 6.16, df = 2, p = 0.046), and caregiver food security score was associated with child food security score (H = 18.31, df = 9, p = 0.032). 

Conclusions: There are robust correlations between caregiver and child clinical outcomes at baseline. These findings underscore the need for FIM research to examine how a tailored program can improve the clinical outcomes of entire households to address health disparities effectively.