Our Projects

FIM @ Tufts

Our projects range across the spectrum of FIM, including large randomized clinical trials in different patient populations; evaluation of new FIM policies and treatments; integration of nutrition security screening into care pathways; estimating costs, cost-effectiveness, and effects on disparities of specific programs; partnerships with farmers to connect them to patients and health care; assessing public perceptions of FIM; and more.

Our Projects

Accelerating Food is Medicine

Accelerating the growing attention, enthusiasm, and evidence surrounding FIM interventions in the U.S.

Analysis of Fresh Connect Participant Characteristics and Cardholder Utilization

Fresh Connect, a “Food as Medicine” product of About Fresh, Inc., consists of a pre-paid, programmable debit card, a cloud-based cardholder success platform, and an analytic engine designed to illuminate the healthcare value of improved food access and nutritional security.

Community Pharmacies for Food is Medicine (CP4FIM)

Design and Evaluation of a Produce Prescription Program in Community Pharmacies

Development and Validation of a Nutrition Security Screener

A two-question tool with a brief preamble

Healthy Baby, Healthy Mom Produce Rx Trial

A Food is Medicine Intervention Among Pregnant Women

Implementing Food and Nutrition Security Screening in EPIC and Clinical Care at Tufts

Food insecurity and nutrition insecurity refer to the inability to access and afford enough food, and enough food that promotes well-being and prevents disease, respectively, on a regular basis for all members of a household.

Improving Nutrition Information Quality with Google AI

Generation of a AI model for quality nutritional information

KP-ENRICH

Kaiser Permanente Evaluating NutRitional Interventions in food-inseCure High-risk adults (KP-ENRICH) Study

Kroger OptUP Validation Study

Comparing and Validating the OptUP® nutrition scoring system against diet quality and health outcomes

Medically Tailored Meal (MTM) Interventions

Impact of Medically Tailored Meals on Obesity, Other Health Outcomes, and Healthcare Utilization under Medicaid Flexible Services

Medically Tailored Meals for Type 2 Diabetes and Heart Disease: An Australian Trial of a ‘Food is Medicine’ Intervention

Diet-related diseases in Australia impose an immense disease burden and disproportionately impact disadvantaged communities, causing more death and disability than tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drug use combined.

NutriCare

Intervention on Optimizing Nutritional Status, Reducing Treatment-Related Toxicities, and Improving Quality of Life Among Vulnerable Patients with Lung Cancer

Nutrition Policy Initiative

Informing, implementing, and promoting federal nutrition policy

Policy Analysis

Cost-Effectiveness of Health System and State-Level Strategies to Improve Diet and Reduce Cardiometabolic Diseases

Policy Analysis

Cost-Effectiveness of Health System and State-Level Strategies to Improve Diet and Reduce Cardiometabolic Diseases

Produce Prescription – An Innovative ‘Food is Medicine’ Intervention to Improve Health Among People With Type 2 Diabetes

While produce prescription programs have been established and increasingly growing in scale in the USA, it is unclear if produce prescription programs could be similarly acceptable, feasible, and effective in other healthcare systems and populations such as in Australia.

Testing the Impact of Technology-based Engagement Strategies to Improve Adoption of Medically Tailored Retail Produce Prescriptions

Produce prescription (Produce Rx) programs have demonstrated a variety of important outcomes for participants including increased fruit and vegetable consumption, reduced food insecurity and in select programs, improved biomarkers like hemoglobin A1c for patients with diabetes.

The Delta GREENS (Growing a Resilient, Enriching, Equitable, Nourishing food System) Food is Medicine Project

The Mississippi Delta is renowned for its rich culture, agricultural history, and fertile soil. Yet, health inequities tied to discrimination, poverty, and racial exclusion persistently plague its Black residents. Mississippi’s extreme poverty stems from racial capitalism and the South’s slavery-based agrarian economy, the remnants of which still linger.

The Global Dietary Database

Standardized global estimates for the intake of 53 foods, beverages, and nutrients

The Tufts Food Compass

A novel nutrient profiling system for science-based assessment of the overall healthfulness of foods.

TMAO/AAA

Tufts TMAO and AAA investigationOverviewWe and others have shown that the host diet and gut microbiome combine to produce a range of microbiome-generated plasma metabolites that influence human health. Characterizing these metabolites and their relationships with major disease endpoints in human populations is critical to elucidate new pathways of risk and corresponding novel preventive and pharmacologic treatments. Our prior work on gut microbial trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) pathway has ...

Wholesome Wave

Generating essential new evidence on produce prescriptions

YouTube Health Kids Food and Nutrition Workshop

Cost-Effectiveness of Health System and State-Level Strategies to Improve Diet and Reduce Cardiometabolic Diseases