Healthy Food Prescription Incentive Program

Summary

It is important for individuals with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) to adhere to a healthy dietary pattern to maintain optimal blood glucose levels and overall health. The increasing costs of healthy foods, however, is a barrier to maintaining healthful dietary patterns, particularly for individuals with T2DM who are experiencing food insecurity (i.e., inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints). Lower diet quality may result in difficulties maintaining optimal blood glucose levels, leading to higher rates of diabetes complications, and increased acute care usage and costs.

Effective strategies to address this issue are lacking despite the well-known impact of food insecurity on maintaining optimal blood glucose levels. One way to address this problem is to provide incentives to purchase healthy foods through healthy food prescription programs. These programs may help to reduce food insecurity and improve diet quality, thereby improving blood glucose control and reducing diabetes complications over time.

This study will investigate the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance (RE-AIM) of a healthy food prescription incentive program among adults who are experiencing food insecurity and persistent hyperglycemia through three concurrent studies; a randomized controlled trial, an implementation study, and a modelling study.

The randomized controlled trial will examine the effectiveness of a healthy food prescription incentive program compared to a healthy food prescription alone in reducing blood glucose levels among adults who are experiencing food insecurity and persistent hyperglycemia.

Conditions

• Diet, Healthy
• Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2
• Diabetes Complications

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Healthy food incentive

$10.50/week/household member for 12 months to purchase healthy foods in participating supermarkets.

BEHAVIORAL

Healthy food prescription

A one-time healthy food prescription pamphlet

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Alberta Innovates Health Solutions

  collaborator OTHER

• Alberta Health services

  collaborator OTHER

• Alberta Blue Cross

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Nu Skin Enterprises

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• University of Calgary

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Dana Olstad, PhD · University of Calgary

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

85 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-05-29

Primary Completion

2024-02-28

Completion

2025-03-07

Countries

• Canada