News and Updates
Cambridge Health Alliance Revere Mobile Market Celebrates Fifth Anniversary
REVERE, MA—March 3, 2023—Undeterred by frigid temperatures, members of the Good Measures team, the Greater Boston Food Bank, Point32Health, City of Revere, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), volunteers, and 400 households that receive produce gathered to celebrate the CHA Revere Mobile Market’s fifth year.
The mobile market, which is held the first Saturday of each month, started in 2018 as a way to increase community access to fresh foods. Good Measures has supported the mobile market since its inception, providing food demonstrations, distributing recipes, assembling bags of fresh produce, and coauthoring a study about the mobile market’s impact. Good Measures registered dietitians also support some CHA patients who participate in the market.
“The CHA mobile market makes a meaningful difference in the health and quality of life for community participants,” said Caroline Carney, RDN, Good Measures Chief Customer Officer. “We all need to take more action to change the way our food system works. I am so proud and in awe of the work CHA has done to make this a reality and all the support the Greater Boston Food Bank has provided to bring fresh food to a community. The mobile markets have shown that food is power. It has the power to bring people together, the power to provide hope, and the power to heal.”
“For the past 5 years CHA's Revere Mobile Market has been able to help food-insecure households have healthy foods such as fresh produce, which is often expensive to purchase,” said Jean Granick, Program Manager, CHA Community Health Improvement. “Without proper food and nutrition, there is a higher risk for our patients and community members developing poor health outcomes.”
Good Measures’ Caroline Carney with Jean Granick and Rachel Zack of Cambridge Health Alliance.
The mobile market has a substantial impact on the community in its five years:
Provided food to 14,737 participants, half of whom are CHA patients.
Registered 3,416 households to participate in the market.
Distributed 489,092 lbs of food—of that 453,681 lbs was fresh fruits and vegetables.
Good Measures Launches the Good Food Prescription Program, a High-Impact, Scalable, and Comprehensive Food as Medicine Solution
Personalized meal plans combined with same-day food deliveries powered by Instacart’s Care Carts make the healthy choice the easy choice.
BOSTON, MA—December 1, 2022—Good Measures, a digital health company, announced the launch of its Good Food Prescription program for health plans and employers. Using Good Measures’ patented technology to curate culturally relevant meal plans personalized to each participant’s health profile and food preferences, the Program generates shopping lists that are fulfilled and delivered by Instacart using its Care Carts technology. Care Carts is a new product from Instacart designed to make it easier for healthcare providers and caregivers to order groceries on behalf of someone else.
“Diet-related disease is the number one cause of death in the United States with a price tag of $1.7 trillion in direct medical expenditures and indirect costs. This is a tragedy of epidemic proportions,” says Caroline Carney, chief customer officer, Good Measures. “By choosing our Good Food Prescription program, health plans such as WellCare of Kentucky are showing their commitment to food as medicine as a way to prevent disease, slow disease progression, and improve health equity.”
Good Measures first launched the Good Food Prescription program with WellCare of Kentucky to improve blood pressure within its Medicaid population and to support a broader health equity strategy. Participants receive personalized, virtual, one-on-one registered dietitian coaching to reinforce long-term behavior change. Ingredients for the meal plans are delivered directly to participants by Instacart, mitigating barriers such as food insecurity and lack of access to healthy options.
“This program will be a powerful tool for our members,” said Dr. Chirag Patel, chief medical officer for WellCare. “It will eliminate many of the barriers to accessing healthy food, and the guidance provided by Good Measures will make it easier for our members to incorporate healthy eating into their daily lives.”
Good Measures is rolling out the Program to other Medicaid, Medicare, commercial health plans, and employer groups in early 2023.
“We developed a long-term behavior change solution through personalization, data-driven insights, and partnerships with organizations such as Instacart,” says Carney. “Our digital health approach taps into the power of our personalized technology to bridge the gap between the food and healthcare industries, and to address the triple threat of diet-related disease, lack of food access, and food insecurity.”
“We’re thrilled to help power Good Measures’ Good Food Prescription program with Care Carts,” said Sarah Mastrorocco, VP of Health at Instacart. “We care deeply about offering healthcare providers and their patients new tools to promote health, and we’re excited to help Good Measures scale their programming, reach more people and make it easier for patients to get medically-tailored groceries.”
About Good Measures
Good Measures is a food-first digital health company that works with health plans, employers, and the food industry to help people improve their health one bite at a time. The company’s app, personalized meal suggestions, and food scoring capabilities are powered by patented technology that optimizes nutrient balance based on the unique health profile of the individual.
About Instacart
Instacart, the leading grocery technology company in North America, works with grocers and retailers to transform how people shop. The company partners with more than 1,000 national, regional, and local retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 75,000 stores across North America on the Instacart Marketplace. Instacart makes it possible for millions of people to get the groceries they need from the retailers they love, and for hundreds of thousands of Instacart shoppers to earn by picking, packing and delivering orders on their own flexible schedule. The Instacart Platform offers retailers a suite of enterprise-grade technology products and services to power their e-commerce experiences, fulfill orders, digitize brick-and-mortar stores, provide advertising services, and glean insights. With Instacart Ads, thousands of CPG brands – from category leaders to emerging brands – partner with the company to connect directly with consumers online, right at the point of purchase. With Instacart Health, the company is providing tools to increase nutrition security, make healthy choices easier for consumers, and expand the role that food can play in improving health outcomes. For more information, visit www.instacart.com/company, and to start shopping, visit www.instacart.com. For anyone interested in becoming an Instacart shopper, visit https://shoppers.instacart.com/.
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Stefany Shaheen, Dariush Mozaffarian, MD (Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition), US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and Caroline Carney.
White houSe conference on hunger, nutrition, and health
September 28, 2022, was the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health—the first such conference since 1969. Good Measures’ Stefany Shaheen and Caroline Carney represented Good Measures as part of a select group invited to the conference. Coming out of the conference, there is now a national strategy on addressing hunger, nutrition, and health.
As Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen, said yesterday: "We are food fighters. Together we can fight the invisible enemy of diet-related disease. A meal is so much more than a plate of calories. It is a plate of hope for the hopeless. It is a voice for the voiceless. Food is not the problem. It is the solution."
All of us at Good Measures are excited to support the national strategy with our food-first solutions to health. Stay tuned for more details.
INSTACART HEALTH ANNOUCEMENT INCLUDES NEW GOOD MEASURES PROGRAM
Instacart announced on September 28, 2022 its new Instacart Health initiative. The announcement describes the new Good Measures Good Food Prescription program, in which we are curating personalized meal plans tailored to each individual’s health conditions and food preferences. We are excited to be collaborating with Instacart, using their Care Carts to improve access and deliver groceries to program participants.
Good Measures’ Caroline Carney Moderates Panel on the Payer Perspective on Food Prescriptions
Caroline Carney in discussion with panelists Chirag Patel, MD, MHCDS, Chief Clinical Officer, WellCare; John Gorman, Founder and Chairman, Nightingale Partners; and Robin Duddy-Tenbrunsel, Associate Principal, Avalere Health.
September, 29, 2022—Good Measures’ Caroline Carney moderated the panel “PRx and Payers: Considerations for Plans as They Approach Food Prescriptions” as part of the National Produce Prescription Collaborative’s Day of Action.
“I am encouraged to see so many health plans embracing food as medicine initiatives and including food prescriptions in their offerings,” said Caroline Carney, Good Measures Chief Customer Officer. “The strategy coming out of the White House Conference links nutrition to healthcare costs and health outcomes, and seeks to improve food access and affordability. We’ve already seen that food prescriptions can be a powerful solution.”
Some takeaways from the panel discussion were that from a health plan and payer perspective, food prescription programs must be:
Able to evolve, grow, and adapt to health plans’ changing needs and populations.
Culturally appropriate to the specific population.
Offering a positive member experience and thus impact to Star Ratings.
Designed to solve specific problems.
Sustainable and give participants resources and tools to continue making positive changes.
Tailored to a plan’s goals and population, which means considering disease prevalence, regional concerns, culture, and other factors.
Collaborative with other health plan teams and community partners.
Ready and able to show value through member satisfaction, patient-reported outcomes, and cost savings.
The Day of Action was held to respond to the food as medicine platform presented during the previous day’s White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health and to establish a strategic plan for further embedding the produce prescription model into standard healthcare practice over the next two years.