The Food is Medicine Initiative, announced in September 2022 by the American Heart Association and The Rockefeller Foundation, with inaugural partner Kroger, at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, seeks to provide the large-scale clinical evidence required to ensure patients receive medical prescriptions for healthy food to help prevent and manage chronic disease.
Our vision is to accelerate a future in which millions of patients receive the benefit of a more holistic approach to diet and health, health care professionals and practitioners know how food is medicine programs can help prevent and manage disease, and payors have sufficient, objective cost and effectiveness evidence for reimbursing food is medicine programs.
This national initiative will help identify, support and implement the most viable food is medicine strategies.
The initiative’s first FIM Request for Proposals focuses on feasibility and implementation science: achieving high rates of enrollment and engagement, using input from the lived experiences of patient participants or practitioners to guide program design, and testing ways to achieve significant short-term changes in healthy eating behavior.
Funded studies will be short term rapid cycle studies (18 months or less) that address challenges in feasibility and implementation or test approaches to achieve short-term behavior change.
Deadline: November 6th, 2023
AHA awards are limited to project PIs that hold a doctoral-level degree, and are associated with eligible institutions, including U.S.-based non-profit institutions, including medical, osteopathic and dental schools, veterinary schools, schools of public health, pharmacy schools, nursing schools, universities and colleges, public and voluntary hospitals and others that can demonstrate the ability to conduct the proposed research.
As a reminder, each applicant for an AHA research award is required to become an AHA professional member if they aren’t already. Join or renew when preparing an application in Proposal Central, online, or by phone at 301-223-2307 or 800-787-8984. Membership processing may take 3-5 days.
AHA strongly supports diversity and inclusion and encourages proposals by women, underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the sciences, military veterans, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community, and those who have experienced varied and non-traditional career trajectories.
Grant amounts will be up to $400,000 over an 18-month funding period, including up to 10 percent institutional indirect costs. The AHA anticipates funding up to $3 million in awards.