Overview:
A randomized clinical trial found that a culturally tailored, traditional-foods meal program for Navajo Nation adults with heart failure significantly reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits.
A first-of-its-kind study showed what Indian Country already knows: Food is medicine.
Results of a randomized clinical trial conducted in the Navajo Nation were published earlier this week, revealing that culturally tailored meals led to fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits for Native people with heart failure.
The 12-week trial included 206 adults at two Indian Health Service sites on the Navajo Nation and provided participants with healthy meals made with locally sourced, traditional foods. All participants had heart failure and had been hospitalized or visited the emergency room in the past 12 months.
Heart disease is known as a lifestyle disease, meaning it can be largely prevented through diet, exercise and environment. Native people have some of the highest rates of lifestyle disease, which experts credit to the lasting effects of tactics used in government campaigns to eradicate Native communities — geographic isolation on reservations, culling traditional foodways, imposing reliance on commodity foods and forced assimilation — that drive food insecurity.
Access to healthy foods is a persistent barrier on the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation by land in the United States. There are only 13 grocery stores within the 27,000-square-mile reservation.
Patients in the study received 14 meals a week, along with appliances they needed to store and heat them, including microwaves, freezers, propane-fueled refrigerators, stoves and propane supplies. The study found that participants saw fewer overall hospital visits, along with weight loss and decreased blood pressure.
Participants also reported an increase in food security, with the provided meals increasing access to food where it would otherwise be limited.
