Food delivery and engagement company FarmboxRx will launch Drivers Health, a social determinants of health (SDOH) product line for health plans to better serve their members.
FarmboxRx combines food as medicine with health literacy to drive member behavioral change, most notably for members living in food deserts. Drivers Health, starting in June, will act as a care management intervention to connect members to underutilized benefits through food deliveries, founder and CEO Ashley Tyrner-Dolce said in an interview with Fierce Healthcare.
“We’ve always had health literacy in the box,” she said. “What Drivers Health is built around is connecting to that care ... where we take on that care management piece for the health plan through our member contact center."
Drivers Health will be an additional product line offered to plans with Medicare, Medicaid and duals members. Many people make difficult financial decisions, having to choose between paying a bill, buying food or refilling a medication. Yet members often don’t realize the full scope of benefits available to them unless there is adequate outreach, said Tyrner-Dolce. These benefits can include transportation, utility or mail-order pharmacy perks.
Members can receive a variety of healthy food options through their food box delivery, including boxes tailored to produce, chronic conditions, maternal health and children. Each plan can include a customized health literacy magazine to educate them on preventive services.
Through Drivers Health, the FarmboxRx team will reach out to members about currently underutilized benefits, and members may contact the FarmboxRx team after sifting through the magazine they receive. Once FarmboxRx connects the member to all appropriate benefits they can access, the company can return to the health plan with a wealth of information on the SDOH benefits needed and desired by members.
The product line has been under development for several years as the company kept track of what members were saying about their benefits.
“If you look at Farmbox in 10 years, we’re a data company,” said Tyrner-Dolce. “We will be able to have so much data on plan members that we can feed back—whether it’s CMS [or] whether it’s the health plan—to understand why people are not engaging.”
The key to engagement, she explained, is through food, and through that avenue Farmbox can help convince members to undergo preventive screenings such as mammograms or diabetic eye exams.
Under the Trump administration and the Make America Healthy Again coalition, she believes there is more potential than ever for food as medicine to cement itself as a key part of the health equation. She’s hoping to see a new budget for food as medicine interventions.
Tyrner-Dolce also believes the new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) team can be a supportive partner on health equity, saying the administration's ultimate approach to the topic is “still very up in the air.”
“I actually do not believe that they are going to get rid of social determinants of health-related benefits,” she explained. “I say that because during Trump’s first administration, [former Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) Administrator] Seema Verma is who actually brought forward the idea of the whole-person health. You can’t argue social determinants of health, and that falls in line with health equity as well.”
In the early days of Trump’s second term, the administration has rescinded health-related social needs (HRSNs) guidance for Medicaid, deleted mention of how health plans can benefit from HRSNs through Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center models, cut a recently established committee on health equity and scrubbed certain phrases from government websites.
But it’s true HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has talked often of his desire to the improve the nation’s food system and prioritize preventive services more, blaming those two factors in part for the rise of chronic disease in the country. Those concerns have drawn some bipartisan support, and lawmakers across both sides of the aisle have previously supported food as medicine interventions. Tyrner-Dolce recently told Fierce Healthcare she has seen a spike in investor interest from venture capitalists ever since RFK Jr.'s nomination.
She also doesn’t anticipate the proposed Medicaid cuts going through Congress will fundamentally shift the company’ strategy.
FarmboxRx currently partners with more than 90 health plans, a news release said.