With $3.2 million in funding from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, a group of researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill is leading a new, large clinical study to address food insecurity among its at-risk members who also have hypertension. The study will measure how to best help people who are food insecure achieve better health through nutrition.
Alice Ammerman, DrPh, and Seth Berkowitz, MD, MPH, are co-leading the study. Ammerman is the Mildred Kaufman Distinguished Professor of nutrition at the Gillings School and director of the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (HPDP), and Berkowitz is assistant professor in the UNC Department of Medicine and an HPDP research fellow.
According to Ammerman, “We’ve designed the study to help provide healthy, inexpensive and easy-to-make meals based on the Mediterranean diet adapted for southeastern taste preferences. Our aim is long-term sustainability for everyone enrolled in the study and to translate our findings to inform health care providers and insurance companies how to best care for people who are at risk for chronic disease and who experience food insecurity.”
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