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This project aims to promote health and eliminate hunger by fostering collaboration, innovation, and action through the Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in Pregnancy (HNH-P) Action Network. The Action Network is a group of organizations and groups across the public, private, nonprofit, and government sectors with an interest in improving health and nutrition for pregnant people and their children. With the leadership of the CDC Foundation and members of the HNH-P Action Network, the goals of this project will include expanding knowledge sharing and connection, developing resources for the network’s sustainability, facilitating stakeholder engagement, and incorporating the voices of those with lived experience into program design and implementation.

Phase 1 of this work, co-funded by the Vitamix Foundation, resulted in the publication of a Consensus Statement on Proposed Nutrition Competencies for Medical Students and Physician Trainees. Phase 2, also funded by the Vitamix Foundation, involved the creation and testing of a Prototype Repository of Nutrition Education Resources. This active grant supports Phase 3 of an initiative to improve nutrition education for health professionals. The focus is on identifying and sharing best practices in innovative teaching methods that effectively convey the Nutrition Competencies outlined in the JAMA Network Open paper. Led by Dr. David Eisenberg and the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, a convening of experts will be organized in collaboration with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The goal is to develop effective strategies for teaching these competencies to medical students and healthcare trainees, ultimately promoting the wider adoption of nutrition education among healthcare providers.

We Inspire Smart Eating (WISE) Babies is a program developed by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences based on WISE, an evidence-based nutrition intervention designed to promote fruit and vegetable consumption in ECE children 3-5 years old. WISE Babies has been adapted to serve children from birth to 36-months, and the program was successfully piloted in Early Childhood Education (ECE) sites in Arkansas and Louisiana. Through this new project, the overarching goal is to establish a solid evidence-base for WISE Babies for children aged 12 to 36 months through a randomized, control study to collect data on the efficacy of the program for children, families, and ECE providers. Upon completion of this effectiveness testing, the WISE Babies curriculum will be submitted for inclusion in the USDA SNAP-Ed Toolkit, filling a critical gap in evidence-based programming for children ages 12 to 36 months.

Eat Real and Vitamix Foundation are collaborating to improve early childhood nutrition in school districts in the United States. This grant allows Eat Real to bring its school food system certification program to high-need districts in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, which will create food systems change affecting over 100,000 students. This grant will also pilot a partnership with another organization, Small Bites Adventure Club, to provide in-classroom, nutrition education for students in these Eat Real schools.

The Family Lifestyle Program (FLiP) is a family-centered clinical community collaborative designed to address food insecurity (FI) and diet-related chronic disease risk in families with children living in underserved communities. A community advisory board of key stakeholders, parents, researchers, dietitians, and physicians guide this work. Together we have created and implemented mechanisms that streamline referral of families to community resources through Patient Navigators and offer a “food as medicine” produce prescription intervention (FLiPRx) that provides free produce and culturally relevant nutrition education. The goal of this grant is to advance this work and support the expansion of the FLiPRx program to 3 additional primary health centers within the Children’s National system and supporting the enrollment of 70 new families to the program.

Nourishing Beginnings is a new integrated service delivery model supporting Medicaid-eligible, food insecure pregnant individuals across Cuyahoga County by providing increased nutritional food access throughout their pregnancy up to three months postpartum. The research team is examining the impact of this outreach through two randomly assigned food access interventions paired with traditional community health worker (CHW) services, nutrition education materials, and provision of basic essential cooking tools. Through this study, the research team will enroll 160 pregnant individuals to receive either a bi-weekly box of medically tailored groceries or bi-weekly financial assistance with healthy food access navigation. The goal is to improve maternal and baby health outcomes and to compare the intervention groups to each other to understand the effectiveness of this approach to improving food security for pregnant people.

Phase 1 of this work involved the design and implementation of a modified Delphi survey involving 37 nutrition subject matter experts to establish thirty-six (36) nutrition competencies for graduate and undergraduate level medical education. This work has been summarized and published in JAMA Open Network. Now that the competencies have been defined, Phase 2 of this project focuses on providing educators and institutions with the resources needed to deliver education that meets the competencies. Through this project a prototype version of a quality-assured repository of food and nutrition educational resources will be developed where resources are "tagged" to enable rapid, user-friendly searching in an open-access, online platform. Guidance and recommendations regarding where this repository of educational information should be housed and maintained will be a key consideration for the team to explore.

The goal of this project is to co-design and test community-centered interventions to improve nutrition, with a focus on eating plant-based foods, in early life for prevention of chronic disease across the life course. Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) programs are voluntary evidence-based home-visiting programs that enroll families from disadvantaged communities. These programs have been shown to have many benefits; however, none focus on promoting healthy nutrition and active lifestyle. Healthy Families Massachusetts (HFM) is the largest network of home visiting programs in MA, overseen by the Children’s Trust a non-profit organization that provides leadership, structure, and centralized training for home-visiting staff. These organizations will work together to improve nutrition in young families.

Support of this project will contribute to the growth and dissemination of the latest evidence highlighting plant-based nutrition for disease prevention and reversal among health professionals, enabling them to apply this crucial science in communities worldwide, through two educational programs. Plant U is a dynamic, online learning and community platform that equips and empowers future healthcare professionals in training with the knowledge and tools they need to become advocates and educators for the evidence-based role of plant-based nutrition to improve and optimize health. The International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention (IJDRP) is the first and only open access, peer-reviewed journal created to document the science of nutrition and lifestyle to prevent, suspend and reverse disease. Investing in these essential programs will help reach tens of thousands of current and future clinicians.

The Vitamix Foundation is partnering with University Hospitals (UH) to develop a 2-year pilot project that will use Lifestyle Medicine health coaching and shared medical appointments to wrap education and support around fertility patients to yield improved nutrition, lifestyle skills, and improved pregnancy outcomes. During the first year of the 8-week program, UH practitioners will gather data and research health coaching and lifestyle changes that will impact the future of patients. These results will be leveraged in the second year to enroll more patients with the goal of the work being funded by insurance.

The Vitamix Foundation is partnering with the CDC Foundation to support the National Hunger, Nutrition, and Health Action Collaborative. The Collaborative will enable individuals and organizations to identify, share and leverage innovations, best practices and standards that support the White House’s National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health announced in September 2022. Collectively, the Collaborative will provide a platform for key partners to assemble and drive concrete actions for a whole of society approach to end hunger and build healthy communities.

The Vitamix Foundation is supporting Heidi's Healthy Canasta, a program founded by the Mary Mitchell Center. This is a sliding-scale healthy grocery delivery service for low-income families in the Bronx, NY, focused on improving access to nutritious food and promoting health throughout the community. The program delivers fresh vegetables grown by community gardens and upstate New York farms and offers "Healthy Bucks" or EBT options to pay for items. It also includes recipes and nutritional information available in English and Spanish. Heidi's Healthy Canasta will expand to engage with local preschools and kindergarten classrooms to introduce the program to parents and teachers. They will also leverage their partnerships with local hospitals to promote the program to parents of newborns and young children.

NWA’s Advancing Maternal and Child Health by Enhancing Professional Connection project builds on the previous Vitamix Foundation funded project. In the last grant period, they identified and piloted an easy-to-use online community forum through which state and local WIC providers (NWA’s members) can strengthen their approach to serving the health, wellbeing, and nutrition of women and young children. The member engagement platform will expand networking and collaboration among members to cultivate and inspire greater engagement with the Association and with each other. It is a culmination of expertise and services NWA has developed over the past three decades: convening stakeholders, professional development and capacity building, strengthening program delivery, and advocacy.

The Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Revere Food Pantry is a visionary therapeutic food pantry. With the establishment of a robust program focused on plant-based foods, patient education and empowerment, psychosocial support, and rigorous evaluation, the MGH Revere Food Pantry will stand-alone as a pioneering example of a healthy lifestyle clinical program addressing social determinants of health. The MGH Revere Food Pantry will serve as a clinical and research model for other food pantries, showcasing the ability to leverage resources to sustainably and meaningfully improve community health. This application seeks to evaluate at least 50 pantry users per year, through baseline, 3 month and 6 month surveys, linked to electronic health record data.

In 2023, The Charlie Cart Project, University of Greensboro North Carolina and Augusta University with the support of the Vitamix Foundation and the Four Friends Foundation, commenced a 3-year program evaluation to better understand the challenges and opportunities of launching food education programs across varying communities. The purpose of this research is to learn what it takes to create a successful food education program within a community-based organization in order to support impact, longevity and sustainability in existing sites, and to support readiness for success in new sites. The project will collect data on the various ways that the Charlie Cart is used and to gain insights and perspective from site “facilitators” (those teaching with the cart) and their collaborative partners about challenges and opportunities, existing and perceived.

Eat Real is an award-winning food systems change model impacting the largest U.S. food system: our public school system. Eat Real’s school district Certification Program, policy and advocacy work, and awareness building aim to ensure every child has access to delicious, sustainable, and culturally relevant food that helps them thrive. In California, where Eat Real’s program and district partnerships started, the Certification Program impacts thousands of children, including children in their first 2,000 days due to California’s strong early childhood programs. Through a partnership with the Vitamix Foundation, Eat Real will grow its Certification Program and impact to serve thousands more children, including children in their most formative years: the first 2,000 days.

To build upon the Vitamix Foundations’ partnership with OHSU, we are supporting the third Nutrition in Pregnancy conference. This meeting will occur in May 2024 and will focus on engaging stakeholders, experts, and community-based leaders to be involved in carrying out practical national and community programs that address identified barriers to nutrition for pregnant people. Leveraging the findings from the White House Conference and the previous OHSU Nutrition in Pregnancy conferences, the programs and actions that come from this convening will be focused on improving the diets among women of reproductive age across the country.

The Vitamix Foundation is partnering with the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative (TKC), in collaboration with the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, to support the Educating Health Professionals Project. The focus of the TKC's efforts will be on the design and implementation of a survey process whereby content experts from across the country contribute to the development of a consensus on the core competencies necessary to address how to train health care professionals to advise patients about food and nutrition.

With support from the Vitamix Foundation 1,000 Days will partner with organizations focused on people of color to listen and learn from Black birthing people about their diet and nutritional intake during pregnancy, as well as their awareness of key parts of the Dietary Guidelines. The project will capture feedback to make materials more culturally appropriate and relevant and share the learnings broadly across the maternal and infant health and nutrition community. This project builds on a successful 2022 multicultural digital campaign, funded by the Vitamix Foundation, and will focus on Black birthing and postpartum people across multiple socioeconomic levels. A secondary purpose of the grant will be to support the strategy and design of the third OHSU Moore Institute Nutrition in Pregnancy Conference.

The Vitamix Foundation partnered with Birthing Beautiful Communities who implemented the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) Food as Medicine (FAM) Preconception, Pregnancy, and Postpartum online course + ACLM Dietitian faculty moderator for training 30 perinatal support doulas. This interactive nutrition course consisted of 4 sessions to help doulas develop the knowledge and skills to effectively guide the nutritional decisions of their clients.

The Vitamix Foundation is supporting Healthy Starts, a pilot study being conducted by the University of Colorado Denver that is evaluating three different schedules of repeated exposure to a novel vegetable among infants 9-12 months of age. Previous studies show that repeated exposure is essential to improve acceptance of novel foods, but different patterns of repeated exposure and their effect on acceptance have not been studied. The findings from this study will yield results that can be submitted to premier publications and shared with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee. To learn more about Healthy Starts and The Children’s Eating Lab click here.

The Vitamix Foundation supported Massachusetts General Hospital Revere Food Pantry, a plant-based food pantry that integrates clinical and research programming to reduce hunger and improve health. This assessment was carried out through clinical and research initiatives, all aimed at alleviating hunger and improving the overall health and well-being of the community's youngest members and their families. The pantry recently opened its new teaching kitchen in March 2023, allowing over 80 families to learn how to cook and try new nutritious foods. The valuable work of the MGH Revere Food Pantry was published in the journal, Preventing Chronic Disease in 2021

We Inspire Smart Eating (WISE) Babies is a new program developed by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences based on WISE, an evidence-based nutrition intervention designed to promote fruit and vegetable consumption in ECE children 3-5 years old. The new program focuses on children 0-3 years old and is being developed in response to the addition of recommendations for children ages 0-2 in the 2020-2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines. The pilot program will deliver education through classroom curricula, parent engagement, and educator training, reaching over 40 ECE staff and approximately 180 children. The research collected from the design of this intervention will eventually be used to conduct a randomized control study to evaluate the efficacy of WISE Babies.

The Vitamix Foundation collaborated with the Family Lifestyle Program (FLiP), a family-centered clinical community collaborative started in 2017 by Children’s National Hospital, the YMCA of Metropolitan Washington, and the American Heart Association to develop innovative ways to address diet-related chronic disease. FLiPRx provides fresh produce, nutrition education, and increased access to national and local supplemental food programs to children and their families identified as food insecure and at risk for diet-related chronic diseases. This grant funded a pilot feasibility trial of the qualitative measure of eating behavior by using a 24-hour food recall interview, the gold standard of nutrition assessments.

The Vitamix Foundation partnered with the National WIC Association (NWA) to develop an online Member Engagement Platform and to support the continuation of the Participant Advisory Council. The member engagement platform is providing an online platform to connect WIC staff and offices across the U.S. to inspire greater engagement within the association and to share resources. The platform went live at NWA’s national meeting in May 2023.

The Vitamix Foundation supported The Charlie Cart Project, which empowers children and their families to make healthy food choices through hands-on learning. This project was conducted in partnership with the University of Greensboro NC and Augusta University to study best practices for community-wide food education programs centered on hands-on lessons with the Charlie Cart Project. The challenges and opportunities associated with launching community food education programs were collected at various schools, food banks, and library-based programs, which will now be used to create a framework for partnership across these sectors.

The Vitamix Foundation is supporting Nurturing Healthy Teachers, which involves the collaboration of three organizations: UT Houston School of Public Health, Penn State Better Kid Care, and Brighter Bites. This project is building off of the food insecurity challenges discovered from the Create Healthy Futures Study that the Vitamix Foundation funded from 2016-2020 (see Early Learning Healthy Teachers Program description). Brighter Bites is joining the effort to improve access to fresh fruits and vegetables as well as nutrition education to reduce food insecurity and improve diet, mental health, and cardiometabolic health among Early Childhood Education (ECE) providers. The impacts will be evaluated to determine the short and long-term effects, in hopes to scale up the intervention to a greater audience of ECEs.

The Vitamix Foundation partnered with 1,000 Days to expand on the previous work from 2019, to put the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) into action. 1,000 Days focused on the development and dissemination of new and existing videos, as well as graphic messaging from the DGAs to a diverse audience of families via social and digital media, reaching over half a million parents and caregivers across the United States. Their team also worked closely with colleagues at Oregon Health & Science University Moore Institute to optimize the June 2022 Nutrition in Pregnancy Conference to co-curate a bigger vision to influence the medical community about the role of nutrition in early child development.

The Vitamix Foundation is committed to the Nourishing Beginnings Project to improve the health and outcomes of expectant mothers and their families in neighborhoods with high rates of infant mortality and chronic diseases. The pilot project aims to develop sustainable delivery models for food, nutrition education, and navigation services, as well as measure their impact on birth outcomes, maternal and child health, and nutrition status. In December 2022, CWRU was awarded a grant of $500,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Better Health Partnership was awarded $300,000 from CareSource in support of their work on this project. For more information about the project, click here.

The Vitamix Foundation supported the Plantrician Project in the publication of the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention (IJDRP). The mission of the IJDRP is to create an internationally recognized journal that serves as the primary repository of scientific research documenting the role of nutrition and lifestyle in the prevention and treatment of chronic lifestyle-related diseases. This journal is open-access with no publication costs for researchers, enabling the publication of the most up-to-date science. With eight issues and 94 articles published over the last three years, the journal has surpassed 20,000 subscribers

The Vitamix Foundation supported the second Nutrition in Pregnancy conference hosted by the Moore Institute, held in Washington D.C. June 2-3, 2022. This partnership was built on the momentum generated by the first conference in 2019. The purpose of this grant was to establish a National Advisory Board and a Local Organizing Committee of expert scientists, physicians, and policy leaders to help identify key topics to present. At the conference’s conclusion, the gaps in maternal nutrition were identified and addressed, as were the actions to fill these gaps. A third conference is currently being planned for 2023.

The Vitamix Foundation supported a project with Wholesome Wave that provided a $60 monthly fruit and vegetable incentive to pregnant mothers and pediatric patients in Corpus Christi, TX. Coupled with the produce incentives, participants also received nutrition education, personalized messaging, and support to empower families to improve their eating habits and physical well-being. Among the notable successes was a significant increase in the number of fruits and vegetables purchased by participants compared to before the intervention period, as well as a decrease in self-reported food insecurity.

The Vitamix Foundation supported the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) in the development and launch of a Preconception, Pregnancy, and Postpartum Food as Medicine (FAM) online course for healthcare professionals. This educational course helped fill a critical gap by providing an easily accessible tool for providers to reference for evidence-based nutrition guidance for their patients. Learner feedback has been extremely positive and the course has reached over 100k health professionals.

The Vitamix Foundation partnered with 1,000 Days, a leading non-profit organization working to improve nutrition for women and children during the first 1,000 days of life. We collaborated to raise awareness and support for the development of the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines, which for the first time addressed pregnant or lactating women and children from birth to 24 months old. 1,000 Days worked in collaboration with policymakers and members of the public to gain knowledge and provide oversight in the making of the guidelines.

The Vitamix Foundation partnered with the Northern Arizona University Foundation (NAUF) and the NAU Health Sciences Department to support their research efforts related to the study of pregnant participants in the Nutritarian Women’s Health Study (NWHS). This observational study provided critical nutrition education for women of childbearing age, as well as those who are currently pregnant. The study focused on the effects of the Nutritarian Diet, focused on micronutrient-rich food consisting mostly of plants, on the effectiveness of dietary patterns, and on the progression of chronic diseases. The findings reveal that this diet showed significant reductions in the BMI of individuals who were overweight as well as high compliance. The study was published in the Journal of Lifestyle Medicine in October 2022.

The Vitamix Foundation supported the first Nutrition in Pregnancy Conference held in Washington D.C. May 2-4, 2019 hosted by the Moore Institute. The conference assembled 29 expert speakers who addressed the unique nutritional needs before and during pregnancy and lactation, and how those needs affected the lifelong health of mothers and children. Based on this input a subgroup developed a consensus statement published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, intending to advance science and identify key areas for further research.

The Vitamix Foundation is partnering with the Tulane Educational Fund to investigate the effects of preconception dietary patterns on pregnancy outcomes using data from eight PrePARED consortium studies. Their objective is to identify the dietary recommendations that best predict healthy infant and maternal outcomes. They will focus on and compare 4 general diets and 2 pregnancy-specific diets by using self-reported nutritional intake measures. The specific aim of this study is to assess the relationship between self-reported preconception diet vs more general diet and their effects on pregnancy outcomes. They will also be examining if adherence to a healthy diet alleviates the effect of obesity on infant outcomes.

The Vitamix Foundation partnered with Penn State University Better Kid Care, an outreach service focused on delivering professional development support to Early Care and Education (ECE) professionals. In collaboration with UT Houston, this project evaluated Create Healthy Futures, a self-paced, web-based intervention on improving healthy eating behaviors among ECE providers. The web-based intervention included 2 phases of modules. The research and evaluation are published in Preventive Medicine Reports.