White Paper
Scaling the Impact of Food on Health: Cross-Sectoral Research Opportunities
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As part of its mandate toward a more equitable ecosystem for evidence, Project Evident works to elevate knowledge to advance the sector and change the culture and practices of evidence. Project Evident recently partnered with Factor Health on a white paper that explores opportunities to build the evidence base for nutrition incentive programs. The blog post and white paper below also appear on the Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin, blog.
Researchers from Project Evident and Factor Health at Dell Medical School have published a new white paper, Building the Evidence Base for Nutrition Incentives and Health. The paper explores opportunities for cross-sectoral collaborations in healthcare, food systems, and government programs to improve health outcomes and food system sustainability. It ends by providing specific examples as research priorities and potential pilots to advance aligned goals.
The white paper was sponsored by Fair Food Network, which pioneered the Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) program, and supported by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
Key highlights include:
- The challenge of a public health and healthcare crisis driven by the growth of diet-related chronic conditions where levers of influence are embedded within agricultural and food sectors.
- Approaches to influencing nutrition and food security via the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and current progress in coordinating these with the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and other elements of the health system.
- The current scope of healthcare’s interactions with the food system, its progress in incorporating food and nutrition as health strategies such as “Food as Medicine,” and how healthcare’s transition to paying for results or “value” could encourage paying for food as health.
- The role of large-scale incentive programs promoting fruits & vegetables consumption and alleviating food insecurity while increasing the resilience of agricultural and food systems.
- Specific research frameworks that encourage cross-sector collaboration to scale the health impacts of food while supporting a sustainable and resilient food system.
About Factor Health: Factor Health is an incubator housed at Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin, that identifies, tests and scales opportunities to address the broader drivers of health to rapidly improve outcomes that matter to people and the health system.
About Project Evident: Project Evident harnesses the power of evidence for greater impact. We believe that by empowering practitioners to drive their own evidence building while also strengthening the surrounding ecosystem, we can increase the number of effective solutions in the social and education sectors and scale them faster—ultimately producing stronger, more meaningful, and more equitable outcomes for communities.