American Heart Association Health Care by Food™
Food Is Medicine:
The American Heart Association’s Health Care by Food™ initiative is coordinating scientific research, public policy advocacy and stakeholder education to advance food is medicine interventions that incorporate healthy food into health care to treat, manage and prevent diet-related diseases.
The need is great: An estimated 90% of the $4.3 trillion annual cost of health care in the U.S. is spent on medical care for chronic diseases, and for many of these diseases, diet is a major risk factor.
Millions of people in the U.S. have low diet quality—a major driver of chronic disease and health inequities, especially among communities of color and those with low income. Health Care by Food is keenly focused on removing barriers to nutritious food through research and community solutions.
In 2024, Health Care by Food awarded research grants to fund 23 small-scale clinical trials focused on rapid cycle innovation, adaptive designs and attention to lived experiences. Results of these studies will enable testing of the scalability and sustainability of large comparative effectiveness trials.
Health Care by Food™ Planning Grant RFP
The Association has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) (PDF) for a planning grant opportunity through its Health Care by Food initiative designed to provide support for the development of a detailed trial protocol and grant focused on developing and testing ways in which food is medicine interventions are efficacious for improved health outcomes.
Deadlines for the application period:
- Application Deadline: March 11, 2025
- This application must be submitted through AHA’s Proposal Central.
- Please visit the Application Resources page for answers on American Heart Association policies and restrictions, application preparation, and general guidelines.
Health Care by Food Researcher & Community Collaborator Convening
Health Care by Food convened 20 of its research grantee teams and their supporting community benefit organizations to address integrating human-centered design principles and behavior change models to ensure that food is medicine interventions are relevant, effective and responsive to the real needs of affected populations.
Foundational Research
The initiative’s research efforts were announced in January 2024, with funds awarded to foundational research projects across the country led by experts in the food and nutrition, behavioral science, epidemiology and cardiovascular research fields.
These research projects focus on feasibility and implementation science in pilot testing different ways of increasing enrollment and engagement in food is medicine interventions and examining ways to accomplish significant short-term changes in healthy eating behavior. Developing ways to increase engagement now, and incorporating those insights in subsequent tests of efficacy, will facilitate the testing of more potent interventions.
Foundational Support
The AHA’s Health Care by Food™ Initiative is supported by anchor funding from The Rockefeller Foundation and contributions from inaugural collaborator Kroger, with additional support from Builders Initiative; Elevance Health; Instacart; Kaiser Permanente; Lyda Hill Philanthropies; United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey; and the Walmart Foundation.
The Health Care by Food initiative was first announced as the Food Is Medicine Initiative at the September 2022 White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health by the American Heart Association and The Rockefeller Foundation.