FarmboxRx, a food delivery service partnering with government plans, is launching a maternal health program designed to pair nutritious foods with tailored education for pregnant people.
The program will focus on promoting prenatal and postpartum care visit compliance, mental health, immunizations, nutrition, newborn and delivery readiness and education on government support programs. FarmboxRx is part of Medicaid and Medicare programs as an Advantage Benefit.
The maternal mortality rate in the U.S., the highest among developed nations, has been on the rise with Black women disproportionately experiencing adverse pregnancy outcomes. Severe maternal hardships are associated with food insecurity, and many individuals on food stamps say the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is not enough to cover the food they need, a recent FarmboxRx survey found.
FarmboxRx aims to enhance outcomes by providing healthy foods and condition-specific health literacy in each box. The company’s goal is to give participants tools to adopt a proactive, informed approach to their health. Critical to implementing the new program is tailoring resources to participants in a culturally relevant and linguistically appropriate way, founder and CEO Ashley Tyrner said.
“To us, health equity is not a multi-language insert,” Tyrner told Fierce Healthcare. Health disparities for people of color are “astronomical” and can be driven by stigma around things like health literacy, she added.
“It really boils down to feeling comfortable when you go talk to your doctor,” Tyrner said. “That is not always how it is, especially for our Black and Brown populations.”
The resources will be tailored to each participant depending on a payer's needs. Some payers might want to encourage more postnatal discharge appointments or help members enroll their baby in the same health plan. Others might want members to get more of a push to get gestational diabetes screenings during pregnancy.
“That’s why it’s so important to be able to have the health literacy,” Tyrner explained. “If you don’t have engagement in the food that you’re sending, it’s not going to be as beneficial to the member.”
Throughout the duration of its program, which can vary, FarmboxRx conducts social determinants of health surveys to understand the barriers participants face when seeking care or resources. Its member contact center also communicates with participants.
When asking for sensitive information participants might be hesitant to disclose, it is critical to be transparent about how their data will be used. Here, FarmboxRx explains to participants that care managers will use their data to make sure they have access to the best possible resources.
“Sometimes health plans are not explaining to the members why they need this data, and that’s why they’re not getting this data back,” Tyrner noted.
FarmboxRx has an in-house content development team that helps build out its programming. The company also works with payers’ chief medical officers to understand in what specific areas their members need support. It joins a growing number of companies entering the food-as-medicine movement in an effort to address nutrition as a social determinant.