Why Ceres Does Research
Since 2007, we’ve been committed to nourishing our clients with meals designed to support their health and healing as they navigate serious illness. This work has brought great benefit to the clients we’ve been able to support in Marin and Sonoma counties. Because we believe that everyone should have access to the food they need to support their health, we’ve shared our model through our Affiliate Partner Program, and we’ve used our voice and experience to advocate for systems change.
The new National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health announced at the White House Conference on September 28 included as one of five pillars: “Integrate Nutrition and Health: Prioritize the role of nutrition and food security in overall health—including disease prevention and management—and ensure that our health care system addresses the nutrition needs of all people. This pillar includes “Expand Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries’ access to food as medicine interventions, including medically tailored meals.”
As part of California’s new MediCal model, called CalAIM (California Advancing Innovation in Medicaid), the state made medically tailored meals and several other nutrition interventions allowable covered benefits starting in January 2022. This means that Medicaid Managed Care Plans can offer and pay for these services for their members. Ceres is now contracted with Partnership HealthPlan of California to provide these services to MediCal members across Marin and Sonoma counties.
Work has begun on the 2023 Farm Bill. This enormous legislative package is renewed every five years and includes significant investments in food and health, from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants and Children (WIC) to Farmer’s Market Match programs and grants funding produce prescription pilots. In December the Senate Agriculture Committee held a two-hour Farm Bill hearing on Food is Medicine with broad bipartisan support for food as medicine, including medically tailored meals.
One of the important ways that Ceres has helped to advance the understanding of and support for medically tailored meals and other food as medicine interventions is through conducting and participating in research studies and pilots. In the past few years these have included:
A four-year state-wide pilot completed in December 2021 that led directly to the new medically tailored meal benefit in California’s MediCal system.
A large-scale randomized control that we completed with Kaiser Permanente which was published in 2022. This study showed statistically significant reductions in readmission rates for members with congestive heart failure and an overall 35% reduction in all-cause mortality for participants.
A pilot we completed with Santa Rosa Community Health in 2022 that showed improvements in both diabetes management and blood pressure when patients received 12 weeks of medically tailored meals.
A pilot we are conducting with West County Health Centers and Santa Rosa Community Health providing a combination of meals and produce bags during pregnancy to people who are living on very low incomes; we have just received a $495,000 grant from US Department of Agriculture to scale this pilot over the next three years.
We know that the amount and kind of food we eat matters for our health. But many of the people we serve don’t have access to the quality of food they need without our support. Pilots and research studies help us build the evidence to encourage the health plans we work with to offer and pay for these services for their members and patients. And that directly translates to more people getting the food support they need to live longer and healthier lives.