Kaiser Permanente NOURISH

About

This formal randomized control trial was conducted by Ceres Community Partnership and Project Open Hand in San Francisco from June 2020 through February 2021. It was one of four large-scale randomized control trials (the highest standard for research) conducted by Kaiser Permanente in 2020 and 2021.

Kaiser Permanente is conducting these four research studies to inform their enterprise-wide strategy to improve food and nutritional security, provide more healthy years for their members, and reduce unnecessary health care utilization and costs.  Specifically, they plan to:

• learn more about COVID-19 patient care needs post hospital discharge, including how medically tailored meals support recuperation/recovery and enable patients to be safer at home, not at grocery stores.

• learn more about medically tailored meal program components – meal frequency, program duration, nutrition counseling and impacts on different chronic diseases.

Patients

For the study conducted by Ceres and Project Open Hand, patients were being discharged from the hospital to home and had a diagnoses of congestive heart failure, diabetes, chronic kidney disease and/or malnutrition.

Family members were also provided with meals with the aim to understand how this added family support might relieve stress for the patient, have the patient feel more cared for, and also support the patient in adopting and being able to maintain healthy dietary changes.

Study Design

Patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups:

• 1,000 patients received Kaiser’s usual care.

• 500 patients received 7 meals each week for 10 weeks, including meals for family members.

• 500 patients received 7 meals each week for 10 weeks, including meals for family members; and 3 to 4 consults with a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist to educate them about how to eat to support their medical condition and to answer any questions.