Food is Medicine Interventions to Improve Health

Top Things to Know

Recent evidence reinforces that FIM works best when interventions are appropriately targeted, sufficiently intensive, and aligned with the clinical needs of the population being served rather than delivered as a one-size-fits-all solution.

Participant engagement and benefit utilization appear to be critical determinants of success; several null trials were characterized by low redemption, low pickup rates, or enrollment of participants with limited opportunity for measurable improvement.

Implementation lessons from large-scale FIM programs highlight the importance of personalization, behavioral science-informed design, streamlined enrollment pathways, and technology-enabled support to improve reach, retention, and effectiveness.

Summary of Conclusion/Findings

This viewpoint reviews the evolving Food Is Medicine (FIM) evidence base and concludes that FIM interventions can improve diet quality, selected clinical outcomes, and healthcare utilization, but benefits are not uniform across intervention types or populations. The authors highlight recent randomized controlled trials showing improvements in blood pressure, including the GoFresh trial and the Healthy Food First trial, while noting that several large diabetes-focused trials did not improve hemoglobin A1c despite providing produce prescriptions, grocery vouchers, or food-farmacy services. The review suggests that intervention effectiveness depends heavily on factors such as adequate intervention dose, participant engagement, benefit utilization, and targeting populations most likely to benefit. Evidence from medically tailored meal studies and Medicaid waiver programs also indicates potential reductions in hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and healthcare spending, particularly for high-risk populations such as individuals with heart failure. The authors emphasize that FIM programs should be designed around specific barriers to healthy eating and matched to clinical context rather than assuming that any food-related intervention will produce health improvements. They conclude that future research should focus on identifying the optimal intervention type, intensity, duration, targeting strategy, and implementation approach needed to achieve both short-term clinical gains and sustained behavior change.