Pregnancy is stressful in and of itself, but for some women, dealing with those physical and mental changes on top of other life pressures can keep them from getting the proper care.
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“Nutrition is really important for pregnancy, but unfortunately in northeast Ohio, Cuyahoga County and Cleveland, we have really disparate health outcomes when it comes to maternal health and infant mortality,” said Greater Cleveland Food Bank’s Director of Community Health, Alissa Glenn. “We’re looking to serve people who really have a higher risk of poor birth outcomes.”
A collaboration between the food bank, University Hospitals, Metro Health Medical Center, and Case Western Reserve University just received $3.8 million from the federal government to study medically tailored groceries (MTGs.) MTGs are groceries appropriate for a person’s health condition.
“They’re typically heart healthy, they’re healthy for someone who has blood sugar control issues such as diabetes, and they’re generally nutritious, so healthy for people who are in pregnancy,” said Glenn.
The initiative started during the pandemic, with the food bank.
“Folks who were Medicaid eligible and pregnant in Cuyahoga County were paired with a community health worker and if they were interested in receiving home delivered medially tailored groceries, they were able to enroll in the program,” she said. “We did see some success with it and this federal grant actually takes it a little bit of a step further to test two different models.”
Professor in the Case School of Medicine’s Department of Nutrition, Elaine Borawski said their prevention center has been tracking retail stores for 10 years and Cleveland hasn’t changed.
“We have large pockets of the city where it’s only a corner store that’s viable for folks and so it’s pretty hard to eat healthy in that space.”
The models being studied include home-delivered MTGs, picking the food up at a medical center, and home delivery that comes with education and recipes.
“It’s very easy to sit in somebody else’s shoes and say this is what you should do,” said Borawski. “This program, we hope it helps to make that a little easier.”
The goal is to learn whether the program results in healthier babies. It could also provide evidence for the cost of MTGs to be covered by Medicaid, Medicare and other insurance programs, according to Case.
Glenn said these groceries can help reduce stress in the body and the stress that comes from coping with food insecurity.
This won't solve the problem but it's a step.
"It can't improve things like structural racism and some of the other things that are much bigger factors," she said. "This is just one piece of the puzzle but we think it's a controllable piece of the puzzle because nutrition is something that can reduce your stress from the inside out."
