When nutritious, high-quality food is not readily available, families have no choice but to buy what is available. They are usually highly processed foods with low nutritional value. Children in these households also experience food insecurity and a variety of socio-economic stressors, which puts them at additional barriers and at risk for developing chronic diseases such as obesity.
To address these concerns, Alison Wu, MD, and Jason (Yangjia) Zhang, MD, of the Boston Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, are working directly with patients in their communities, rather than in their communities. Tackling childhood obesity and food insecurity. There is no need to expect patients to travel far away for treatment.
“Incorporating a subspecialty focused on obesity and nutrition into a community-based pediatric practice is a unique model,” Zhang explains. “We’ve learned that to understand and track the root causes of obesity in our communities, we have to show up to our patients and be where they are. That’s why we at Martha Elliott Health Center This is why it has been four years since I opened my gastrointestinal clinic.”
Located in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Martha Elliott’s Boston Children provides care to families in the area and surrounding areas. “What is unique about Martha Elliott is that primary care and some specialty care are offered in parallel,” Wu explains. “This allows us to respond to the specific needs of our patients and provide informed care.”
community-centered care
For Wu and Zhang, much of their work is driven by building stronger connections with their communities as clinicians and providing true health equity for their patients.
“Equity doesn’t necessarily mean giving everyone the same thing,” Chan explains. “We had to ask ourselves how we could change our habits to better serve our community.”
For example, clinicians focus on getting to know their patient populations as personally as possible. Many of Martha Herriott’s clinicians and staff live within the same communities as our patients, allowing us to more closely observe their patients’ daily lives. “Our team knows the school system very well because our children also go through the same system,” she explains. “Through our own experiences and by actively seeking to learn about our communities, we are familiar with the same grocery stores, parks, and after-school programs as our patients.”
Through this community-centered care model, visits to Martha Elliott have increased and patients in the center’s bariatric program have successfully lost weight, something that was difficult to achieve before opening the gastrointestinal clinic. We are starting to see results.
Rethinking your meal kit program
Wu believes that to address obesity, clinicians need to think of food as medicine. “Nutrition-based interventions in healthcare settings can help patients prevent, manage, and treat certain diseases,” she explains. “Food and nutrition security is essential for patients and families to achieve complete health.”
Is that one approach? Healthy meal kit delivery program. Previous studies have evaluated the effectiveness of meal kit programs for adults with chronic illnesses and food insecurity, but little research has been conducted to determine the effects on children. So Wu and his colleagues are now studying whether such programs could benefit families who are food insecure or have obese children.
The first phase of the Intervention on Childhood Obesity (InForM) involved 30 families at Martha Elliott Boston Children’s Hospital whose children met criteria for obesity and reported food insecurity.
Each family received an Eatwell meal kit, a locally made meal kit developed by trained chefs and health coaches, delivered to their home weekly. Each meal kit included fresh ingredients and photo-based recipes (2 recipes per week for 6 weeks) in both English and Spanish.
“Caregivers valued the hands-on, experiential learning provided by the meal kit program. They found it easy and convenient to prepare meals, that it was culturally appropriate, and that their children After helping prepare the food, I became interested in trying new foods,” says Wu.
Accelerating the future of research
While Phase 1 of the study focused on defining the basic elements of the meal kit delivery intervention, Phase 2 focused on detailing how the program impacts behavioral risk factors associated with childhood obesity. Dr. Wu shared that he plans to look into it.
“The first phase of this trial was to determine whether this program was feasible and acceptable as a nutrition-based intervention by both clinicians and patients,” explains Wu. “Having proven this, Phase 2 will test whether the meal kit program can meaningfully impact household food insecurity, diet quality, and other risk factors associated with nutrition-related diseases in children. To do.”
For more information, please visit our Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition.
