UMass-Amherst: Produce 'Prescription' Grants Aim to Reduce Food Insecurity, Encourage Healthy Eating

AMHERST, Massachusetts, Oct. 21 (TNSres) -- The University of Massachusetts-Amherst issued the following news:

University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty and students are part of three federally funded community partnerships in Western Massachusetts aimed at alleviating food insecurity and encouraging healthy eating by expanding access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

The partnerships are funded by three, three-year $500,000 grants from the USDA's Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP), which nationally has invested $59.4 million through GusNIP's nutrition incentive and produce prescription programs.

Produce prescription (PRx) programs are a medical treatment or preventive service for people who have diet-related health risks or conditions, food insecurity or other challenges to obtaining nutritious foods. Individuals are referred to the program by a healthcare provider or health insurance plan.

"Food insecurity is persistent in low-income communities and presents a major barrier to the health and well-being of families and individuals in Western Massachusetts," says Lorraine Cordeiro, professor of nutrition in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and the College of Natural Sciences, and director for the Center for Research on Families (CRF) at UMass Amherst. "Produce prescription programs are a really innovative way to engage hospitals, clinics and health centers with local farmers and other entities in the food supply chain to improve food access and promote healthy eating."

Cordeiro is lead investigator for the Springfield Prescription Produce Collaborative, the academic-community research team that received one of the grants. The Springfield-based Wellspring Cooperative Corporation, which runs the Go Fresh Mobile Market, serves as the lead agency. Supporting partners include Baystate Health and its three community health centers - Brightwood Health Center, Mason Square Health Center and High Street Adult Medical Center - and UMass's CRF.

Eligible, low-income participants will be given "prescriptions" from primary care providers at collaborating health centers to receive fresh fruits and vegetables. They will then pick up $40-$80 worth of produce each month, along with recipes and nutritional information, from the Go Fresh Mobile Market site they visit.

"Addressing food insecurity with projects like this has the power to improve health outcomes and help people meet their goals for physical and mental health," says Dr. Elizabeth Eagleson of the UMass Chan Medical School, a physician at Brightwood Health Center and the project's clinical lead.

Faculty and students at the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing head the research team for another produce prescription program called Produce for Health in Hampshire County's Food Desert Communities, where almost half the residents of 14 rural hilltowns, as well as Easthampton, Amherst and Westfield, live in areas where few stores sell fresh fruits and vegetables at a price they can afford. The Hilltown Community Health Center will provide 210 eligible people with a prescription for fresh fruits and vegetables through a system integrated in their service. Participants will receive a debit card from the nonprofit About Fresh pre-loaded with $40 per month that can only be spent on fresh produce. The participants will be offered educational activities on topics such as healthy eating, healthy shopping and container gardening. The debit cards will be accepted at large supermarkets including Stop & Shop and Wal-Mart, as well as small retailers that sell locally grown produce, such as the Amherst Mobile Market and the Hilltown Mobile Market.

Memnun Seven, an assistant professor of nursing, and Raeann LeBlanc, an associate professor of nursing, are leading the effort to recruit, collect and analyze data about the program's effects on participants' health, including their weight, HbA1C (a blood sugar test), their hospital visits, self-efficacy for healthy eating and sense of food security. The researchers will share their findings widely to raise awareness about the impact of increasing access to fresh produce.

"This program will help people who have or are at risk for chronic health conditions better manage their health and reduce their use of the healthcare system through better nutrition and reduced food insecurity, while reducing health costs," Seven says.

LeBlanc adds, "We have already seen an immediate impact in participants' appreciation for improved access to fresh fruits and vegetables that this program offers. The innovative public health collaboration with the Hilltown Community Health Center, Collaborative for Educational Services and the university brings health care to where it is needed to address and prevent chronic health conditions."

In Holyoke, Nuestras Raices (Our Roots), an urban agriculture group with a five-acre farm, will use its produce prescription program grant to implement Nuestros Productos (Our Produce). The program targets Latinx pre-diabetic and diabetic MassHealth and Medicare accountable care organization patients, primarily living in Holyoke. Additional partners include the Holyoke Health Center and the Community Care Cooperative (C3).

"Diabetes disproportionately harms Latinx, low-income and food-insecure communities - Holyoke is all three," says Airin Martinez, an assistant professor of health promotion and policy, who leads the Nuestros Productos research and evaluation team, along with nutrition faculty member Megan Patton-Lopez.

The produce prescription boxes, provided biweekly for four months across two years, will include many culturally relevant vegetables from Nuestras Raices and other local farms, such as diverse squashes, ajies dulces (sweet peppers from Latin America) and recao (a tropical herb).

"Our expectation is that by improving access to produce and food security we can improve cardiometabolic health and reduce healthcare utilization and costs by improving weight and diabetes management," Martinez says. "If this intervention proves to be successful, the state may sustain the intervention by using ACO flexible spending dollars to subsidize produce prescriptions in the future."

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Original text here: https://www.umass.edu/news/article/produce-prescription-grants-aim-reduce-food-insecurity-encourage-healthy-eating