Cordeiro is principal investigator of the Springfield Prescription Produce Collaborative, the academic-community research team that received one of the grants. Springfield-based Wellspring Cooperative Corporation, which operates the Go Fresh mobile market, serves as lead agency. Supporting partners include Baystate Health and its three community health centers – Brightwood Health Center, Mason Square Health Center and High Street Adult Medical Center – and UMass CRF.
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Eligible low-income participants will receive “prescriptions” from primary care providers at collaborating health centers to receive fresh fruits and vegetables. They will then collect between $40 and $80 worth of produce each month, along with recipes and nutritional information, from the Go Fresh Mobile Market site they visit.
“Addressing food insecurity with projects like this has the power to improve health outcomes and help people achieve their physical and mental health goals,” says Dr. Elizabeth Eagleson from UMass Chan Medical School, a physician at Brightwood Health Center and clinical lead for the project.
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Professors and students of Elaine Marieb College of Nursing lead the research team for another produce prescription program called Produce for Health in the food desert communities of Hampshire County, where nearly half of the residents in 14 rural hilltop towns, as well as Easthampton, Amherst and Westfield , live in areas where few stores sell fresh fruits and vegetables at a price they can afford. The Hilltown Community Health Center will provide 210 eligible people with a prescription for fresh fruits and vegetables through a system integrated into its service. Participants will receive a debit card from the nonprofit About Fresh, preloaded with $40 per month that can only be spent on fresh produce. Participants will be offered educational activities on topics such as healthy eating, healthy shopping and container gardening. Debit cards will be accepted at large supermarkets, including Stop & Shop and Wal-Mart, as well as smaller retailers that sell locally grown produce, such as Amherst Mobile Market and Hilltown Mobile Market.
Memnun sevenassistant professor of nursing, and Raeann LeBlanc, associate professor of nursing, is leading efforts to recruit, collect and analyze data on the program’s effects on participants’ health, including their weight, their HbA1C levels (a blood sugar test), their visits to the hospital, their self-efficacy regarding healthy eating and feeling of food security. Researchers will share their findings widely to raise awareness of the impact of increased access to fresh produce.
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“This program will help people suffering from or at risk of chronic diseases better manage their health and reduce their reliance on the health care system through improved nutrition and reduced food insecurity, while reducing health care costs” , explains Seven.
LeBlanc adds, “We have already seen an immediate impact in participants’ appreciation for the improved access to fresh fruits and vegetables that this program provides. The innovative public health collaboration with Hilltown Community Health Center, the Collaborative for Educational Services and the university brings health care to where it is needed to treat and prevent chronic health conditions.
In Holyoke, Nuestras Raices (Our Roots), an urban agriculture group with a five-acre farm, will use its Produce Prescription Program grant to implement Our products (Our products). The program targets patients in MassHealth and Medicare prediabetic and diabetic Latinx accountable care organizations, living primarily in Holyoke. Other partners include Holyoke Health Center and Community Care Cooperative (C3).
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“Diabetes disproportionately harms Latinx, low-income, and food insecure communities – Holyoke is all three,” says Airin Martínezassistant professor of health promotion and policy, who directs the Our products research and evaluation team, as well as a nutrition faculty member Megan Patton-López.
The produce prescription boxes, provided every two weeks for four months over two years, will include many culturally relevant vegetables from Nuestras Raices and other local farms, like various squash, ajíes dulces (sweet peppers from Latin America) and recao (a tropical herb).
“We hope that by improving product access and food security, we can improve cardiometabolic health and reduce health care utilization and costs by improving weight and diabetes management,” Martínez said. “If this intervention proves successful, the state could sustain it by using ACO flexible spending dollars to subsidize product prescriptions in the future.”
