Can Reliable Access to Nutritious Food Improve Health?
Can Reliable Access to Nutritious Food Improve Health?
In a new collaboration, Jacey Greece and Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz will partner with a local food insecurity nonprofit and a Swedish grocery store chain to evaluate whether reliable access to nutritious food from week to week can influence individuals’ and families’ health outcomes.
Each day, nearly 50 million people in the United States wake up not knowing whether they will have enough food to eat. Compounding this public health problem is an understudied issue that many individuals and families also face: not knowing which specific and nutritious foods they will have access to week after week—necessary information for planning healthy meals.
As sweeping federal funding cuts and eligibility changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) continue to take effect from state to state, millions of families are facing even greater uncertainty about what their next meal will look like. In a new collaboration, School of Public Health researchers will team with Daniel’s Table, a Framingham, Mass.-based nonprofit dedicated to increasing food security and nutrition education, and Matmissionen, a Swedish grocery store chain that provides affordable food to people experiencing financial hardship, to better understand how this uncertainty around food access can influence health outcomes.
Jacey Greece, clinical professor of community health sciences, and Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz, chair and professor of community health sciences, will lend their research expertise to Predictable Choice, a new initiative that Daniel’s Table launched earlier this month to explore whether making nutritious food access more reliable for families can improve people’s health by enabling them to plan meals, establish and maintain healthy routines, and manage health conditions.
Rather than focusing on traditional food insecurity metrics such as volume of food provided to individuals and families in need, Predictable Choice will integrate community-based food services, nutrition education, and academic research to quantify the real-world struggles of maintaining consistent and nutritious food access, with a goal to ultimately strengthen food access and public health programs to meet community needs.
“Being certain about where your food comes from, and knowing which foods you will be able to eat on a regular basis enables people to plan their meals in advance and establish healthy routines. But if you don’t know what your next meal is or where it is coming from, it becomes much more stressful to plan ahead,” says Greece. “At Daniel’s Table, success is not simply measured in pounds of food distributed; it is about what people actually eat, their overall health and well-being, and whether they have the tools to plan and prepare meals amid uncertainty. There is a genuine commitment to learning, collaborating, and continually improving services in response to what clients need.”
Founded in 2012, Daniel’s Table offers multiple healthy food channels to communities in and around Framingham, providing food relief and nutrition education through a weekly farmer’s market, home deliveries of food, cooking classes, and a nutrition education center, as well as community freezers in schools, churches, senior centers, and more. Soon, it will also launch a wellness center. The idea for Predictable Choice was borne from the organization’s 10+ years of engaging directly with families and observing the burden that accompanied not knowing what food they could count on receiving week to week. Greece and Rodriguez-Diaz will combine decades of experience in community-engaged research and program evaluation to capture the health outcomes of making nutritious food access more predictable.
This work highlights the importance of academic-community partnerships in addressing pressing issues, says Rodriguez-Diaz.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with Daniel’s Table to support meaningful work to address food security in our communities,” Rodriguez-Diaz says. “Our collaborations will produce evidence of the impact of their services and will inform future research and activities that can be implemented to address social and behavioral factors impacting health in Massachusetts and beyond.”
As part of this collaboration, community participants will receive more consistent knowledge and access to nutritious food, and the researchers will evaluate changes in participants’ food security, fruit and vegetable consumption, and functional mobility, as well as blood pressure and blood glucose.
“As a researcher and practitioner who has worked to address food insecurity alongside federal agencies, state health departments, school districts, and local food pantries, I have seen firsthand how difficult it can be to translate good intentions into meaningful, lasting change,” Greece says. “Daniel’s Table brings together the infrastructure, data, community relationships, and genuine commitment to clients needed to move beyond meeting immediate food needs and create lasting improvements in the health and well-being of the people it serves. It is an honor they have chosen to collaborate with BUSPH to fulfill their mission and vision.”