(368) Benefits of Medically Tailored Meal Interventions for People with CF

Background: For many people with CF (pwCF), barriers exist to accessing the quantity and quality of food necessary for their CF needs; CF clinicians and PwCF are interested in unique intervention opportunities to address food insecurity (FI) and alleviate these barriers. Food & Friends (F&F) is a community-based organization in the DC region providing home delivered medically tailored meals and groceries to people with life-challenging illnesses at no charge. After discussions with the CF Foundation and local CF clinicians, F&F started a pilot for pwCF. We sought to understand the benefits of a program for pwCF, barriers this program alleviated, and to determine if this collaborative model between a community program, the CF Foundation, and CF clinicians is impactful.

Methods: In January 2022, we hosted a post-pilot focus group with the 6 CF clinicians from 4 CF programs who participated in the pilot. In March 2022, the CF clinicians interviewed their participating CF families. Each clinician performed interviews by phone or in person. Results were deidentified and analyzed. We also received anonymous data from F&F to understand the population of pwCF participating in the program and associated metrics.

Results: Between June and December 2021, 16 pwCF and 6 family members received meals or groceries from F&F, totaling 5,678 meals. Of the 16 pwCF, 3 were referred due to an acute exacerbation, 3 are living with advanced lung disease, and 10 are considered pediatric.

The clinician focus group findings indicated the start-up model successfully facilitated a connection to a new resource trusted by clinicians and reliable for pwCF and their families who experience FI. Additional successes included lightened clinician workload and constant, open communication between organizations.

CF clinicians interviewed 9 of the 16 pwCF or their caregivers to identify program benefits and alleviated barriers. PwCF and families identified many barriers to accessing food before F&F: high cost of healthy foods (78%, n=7), unreliable transportation (22%, n=2), and lack of energy (22%, n=2). When asked about changes in their food access since starting the program, 67% of respondents identified an improvement from “sometimes a challenge” to “never a challenge.” Benefits of the program include: time saved (100%, n=9), money saved (100%, n=9), increased access to food (100%, n=9), improved diet quality (78%, n=7), lowered stress (78%, n=7), and ability to focus more on CF care and treatment (78%, n=7). In the 7 months of this pilot, 4 individuals (45%) indicated they have noticed no changes in their health, while others noticed changes such as weight gain (22%, n=2), beneficial weight loss (22%, n=2), and increased energy (22%, n=2).

Conclusions: Medically tailored meal or grocery delivery interventions can be beneficial to pwCF and their caregivers to remove some food access barriers, improve diet quality, increase energy, and save both time and money. Further research is needed to evaluate the impact on healthcare cost and health outcomes.

The model of CF Foundation staff facilitating a collaboration between CF programs and a local resource helped to alleviate some administrative barriers for clinicians and resulted in the CF community being connected with a previously untapped resource for food. This model is both feasible and impactful. We will continue to explore opportunities for collaborative interventions, including a better understanding of medically tailored meals paid for by health insurance plans.

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