The Clinical Case for Food as Medicine

What if food worked better than medication for managing diabetes?

In this clip from our episode “Food As Medicine: From Trend to Treatment”, CareTalk host John Driscoll and guest Spencer Pratt, Chief Growth Officer at NourishedRx, share the clinical data behind their food as medicine approach to diabetes care.

Check out the full episode here

🎙️⚕️ABOUT SPENCER PRATT
Spencer is Chief Growth Officer at NourishedRx. He is a leader in developing innovative frameworks and solutions for addressing social drivers of health, health equity, and population health.

Prior to joining NourishedRx, Spencer held leadership roles at Unite Us and Carrot Health and established a consumer insights solution at Optum. He takes an innovative and customer-centric approach to ensure value creation and exceptional experience for healthcare organizations and members.

🎙️⚕️ABOUT CARETALK
CareTalk is a weekly podcast that provides an incisive, no B.S. view of the US healthcare industry. Join co-hosts John Driscoll (President U.S. Healthcare and EVP, Walgreens Boots Alliance) and David Williams (President, Health Business Group) as they debate the latest in US healthcare news, business and policy. 

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Transcript

John: 0:06

For folks who have diabetes, I mean a low sugar, a vegan diet. Like people to your point, know that this is a problem. Individuals have known it as a problem forever. What makes you think or, or, or show that you can actually change people's diet and change the way they, they, they, they consume the, the, the food that's, that's killing them.

Spencer: 0:30

I think one, one thing that's different about our approach, John, is historically you'd go to the doctor and the doctor would say, you need to eat better, and here's a brochure. Go eat these foods. And most people wouldn't know where to start, or they wouldn't, they wouldn't have trust in that process because they haven't felt the impacts of eating that way historically. Um, so what we're doing is we're actually delivering the clinically guided food, food that's, um, guided by the dietician, working with a member. That food shows up at the participant's home and they start consuming it. Uh, and within a week or two, uh, we're driving an aha moment where the member says, wow, I feel better. I have more energy. Um, I, I trust the, the, the food that's being provided to me, and I trust this program and I'm motivated to continue because I haven't felt this way in a long, long time. And so it, through experiential learning and delivering a tangible good, like this clinically tailored food that we're providing it, it builds that aha moment and opens the door to meaningful engagement throughout the program.

John: 1:30

And so you, you give food, you're, you're guiding with a tech enabled service. Um, what are the results like?

Spencer: 1:37

First and foremost, activation, engagement, member experience. Uh, results are gold standard in the industry. We're we're seeing incredible rates of engagement, incredible member experience, and that's foundational to building trust and opening the door to clinical impact. Um, from a clinical impact perspective, we, we have so many great results, John, but I'll, I'll share, uh, just one or two examples. Within diabetes programs, we're seeing a one and a half point reduction in hba one C within three to four months. That, that's the key measure that we're looking to improve, uh, for members living with, uh, type two diabetes. Uh, and for reference that's more effective than most diabetes medications. And I think even more compelling, John, we talk about sustainable behavior change. Often our goal is not to deliver food. To members like we do with medications for a lifetime. It's to use food as a, an activation tool and an engagement tool that drives immediate nourishment. But really, um, through that as, as well as the coaching and the education, we're driving confidence and knowledge and new skills and habits that can last a lifetime. And as we follow members up to 12 months post receiving the food from Nourished Rx, not only are we seeing maintenance. In that A1C reduction that we see in the first three to four months, we're seeing continual improvement in A1C to a 2.2 point reduction on average 12 months post starting the.