Nourishing Beginnings, a collaboration among the Greater Cleveland Food Bank and Case Western Reserve University, MetroHealth, and University Hospitals will launch a study called Nourishing Tomorrow to ensure that pregnant individuals are food secure.
Access to healthy foods is a social determinant of health that is still a prevalent problem in the United States. According to the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 13.5 percent of U.S. households were food insecure at some point in 2023; an increase compared to 2022 (at 12.8 percent). Providing equitable solutions to food insecurity can ensure that vulnerable individuals, like pregnant individuals, can live well and prevent medical conditions. Pregnant individuals need to receive healthy foods to have enough nutrients for a healthy pregnancy.
Providing equitable solutions to food insecurity can ensure that vulnerable individuals, like pregnant individuals, can live well and prevent medical conditions.
Without access to healthy foods, pregnant individuals and their unborn child/children are at risk for pre-eclampsia, hemorrhage, low birthweight, stillbirth, and developmental delays. Fortunately, many entities are implementing interventions from the Food is Medicine Initiative. The Food is Medicine Initiative is a federal strategy—administered by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion— to decrease food insecurity and nutrition-related chronic diseases to enhance health and racial equity in the United States.
The components of Nourishing Tomorrow, three groups
Locally, the Greater Cleveland Food Bank and Case Western Reserve University, in collaboration with MetroHealth and University Hospitals, are implementing an extension to their Nourishing Beginnings program called Nourishing Tomorrow. With funding from the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the collaborative research team will determine if medically tailored groceries (MTG), a Food is Medicine intervention will improve overall health for babies and pregnant individuals. Researchers will compare three groups of pregnant individuals for the Nourishing Tomorrow Program. The three groups are:
- People who pick up their groceries from the MetroHealth and University Hospitals Food is Medicine programs.
- People who receive groceries delivered every other week to their homes.
- People who also receive home delivered groceries, but also receive nutrition and culinary education that includes cooking videos, cooking skill development, and an online social support community.
The pregnant food insecure individuals will be recruited from the high-risk pregnancy clinics at MetroHealth main campus and the UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Ahuja Center for Women & Children. Researchers will be studying a wide range of outcomes including birth outcomes, dietary quality, stress, depression, and the impact of systemic racism through microaggressions. If this Food is Medicine intervention brings successful results, the hope is that the program will be reimbursed through Ohio Medicaid in the future.
The team hopes to begin recruiting patients for Nourishing Tomorrow starting in March 2025.
Recruitment for Nourishing Tomorrow study will start soon
Currently, researchers are still working on Nourishing Beginnings phase, the pilot for which this new study is based, where participants were recruited by community health workers. The team hopes to begin recruiting patients for Nourishing Tomorrow starting in March 2025. Participants must be pregnant food insecure patients, 18 and older, who are patients at either of the two downtown pregnancy clinics. Hopefully, the success of Nourishing Tomorrow will lead to more pregnant individuals getting access to healthy foods.
