As some grocery prices continue to climb, the American Heart Association is working to make healthy food more accessible and affordable for those in need across the U.S.
Dr. Kevin Volpp, Scientific Lead for the Health Care by Food Initiative from the American Heart Association, says a recent survey by the organization shows that cost is a big factor when it comes to food purchases.
“I was struck throughout the report and the survey that cost really does loom large as a big barrier to many Americans. This probably shouldn’t surprise any of us. We’re well aware of the fact that inflation has been high. A lot of people are struggling and there’s a real mismatch in many cases between. The supplying availability of healthy food, where people live and what it costs,” he said.
The purpose of the Health Care by Food Initiative is to build the evidence needed to show clinical and cost effectiveness so patients with acute or chronic disease or who have risk factors for disease can access cost-effective food is medicine programs as a covered benefit through public and private health insurance.
“Commonly, people think of food as medicine initiatives as being comprised of medically tailored meals, produce prescriptions, medically tailored groceries, and the strongest evidence existing is in medically tailored meals where there’s some very encouraging evidence on the impact of hospital readmission, hospital costs,” he said. “On produce prescriptions, medically tailored groceries, we have pretty good evidence that this reduces food insecurity and improves people’s diets.”
However, Volpp says more awareness is needed.
“The ‘food is medicine’ is still, from the consumer standpoint, a relatively a concept people are relatively unaware of. So, we have a lot of work to do there in terms of communication and marketing. But that said, a lot of people are very familiar with the concept of produce prescriptions,” Volpp said. “So, in some sense this has begun to enter into the lexicon of what people are familiar with. People are very aware of the need to eat healthy food. These programs are still in a nascent stage, and so we need to both build evidence and build awareness more broadly on what’s possible.”
Click HERE to learn more about the American Heart Association’s Health Care by Food Initiative.
