WED-076 - Transforming Health Through Food: Identifying Barriers and Practices in a Community-Focused Food is Medicine Intervention.

Brief Abstract Summary: This presentation will focus on identification of barriers, facilitators, and implementation strategies to support a food is medicine program’s enrollment, participant retention, and coaching/education. Significant findings among participant health data at the programs mid-way point will be explored, as well as survey results from trained nutrition coaches facilitating the program.

Detailed abstract description: Food and nutrition insecurity is an international issue disproportionately impacting low-income and minority groups. Low-income communities are less likely to have access to adequate food, proper nutrition education, healthcare, and are more likely to experience chronic illnesses. Considering the national attention being given to this topic, there is a corresponding influx of food is medicine (FiM) interventions to address it. This presentation will outline key program components of a FiM intervention engaging multiple community partners. Programming barriers and facilitators will be described from the perspectives of trained nutritional coaches. The FoodFARMacy initiative is a 12-month food is medicine intervention that includes bi-weekly nutrition coaching and a bag of fresh produce for food insecure adults with an existing chronic disease. Each session, participants engage in one-on-one nutrition education and goal setting with a trained coach. Participant data is collected at baseline (1m), mid- (6m), and post-intervention (12m), and includes both self-reported (e.g. food security) and biometric (e.g. BMi, blood pressure) measures. Coaches involved in the intervention are recruited from partner community organizations, trained, and then deliver the intervention to their existing clients/patients. Surveys were conducted among the coaches at the mid-point of the intervention (6m) to identify the effectiveness of the training, their perspective of the program’s usefulness, and barriers to implementation. The survey instrument used a Likert scale to measure agreeableness (Strongly agree to strongly disagree) of a variety of statements about the program development and implementation. As of October, 2024, five partner organizations and 32 partner coaches have been recruited and trained through FoodFARMacy and two of the partner sites have reached the 6-month point in the intervention. Eleven coaches have completed the survey with 100% indicating the training and onboarding process prepared them to be a coach in the program and 100% indicating the nutrition education materials provided were clear and easy to understand. Nearly all coaches reported they were satisfied with the quality (98%) and quantity (100%) of produce being provided to clients. When asked about facilitators and barriers, 81.8% identified patient/client availability and transportation as the main barrier, while facilitators include the usefulness of the health education materials (36%) and providing a produce incentive (8%). As food is medicine interventions emerge as a promising strategy to address food as a social determinant of health, it is important to identify key program components, facilitators, and barriers to transfer interventions into practice. This presentation outlines these key elements of implementation from the perspective of key stakeholders to provide lessons learned for both researchers and practitioners.