Objectives The aims of this study were to develop and implement a “Food as Medicine” intervention using quantitative methods supported by health literacy and food choice and behavioral models to target chronic diseases under free-living conditions in adults diagnosed with chronic diseases. The hypothesis of this study is that “Food as Medicine” nutrition and lifestyle intervention sessions will result in significant improvements in food choices, as well as shopping and cooking behaviors. Methods The Food as Medicine (FAM) study is a community-based pilot study that measured the effectiveness of a nutrition intervention to improve chronic disease risk factors and outcomes among African Americans with either pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, elevated total blood cholesterol levels, obesity or a combination of these disorders. The study enrolled patients who were attending both Howard University Family Medicine and Internal Medicine Practices, and were residents of wards seven or eight in the District of Columbia. Fifty-four participants were enrolled and assigned to five cohorts, which consisted of five group sessions over three months, and focused on improving diet and health literacy through nutritionist-led, culturally-tailored, nutrition education classes that included health literacy, mindfulness exercises, and cooking demonstrations. Results After program completion, FAM participants demonstrated significant improvements in all outcome measures of interest: healthy dietary patterns (P < .001), healthful eating (P = .002), positive changes in dietary choices (P < .001), cooking confidence (P < .001), reduction of cooking barriers (P < .001), and healthy food preparation (P < .001). Participants also increased the number of times in one week that they cooked dinner at home (P < .001). Conclusions This study demonstrated the positive impacts of including health literacy, mindfulness exercises, and cooking demonstrations in a nutrition education program. The outcomes of this study can be used to inform and improve future community intervention studies within the areas of chronic disease in low income and minority populations. Funding Sources Funding for this study was received from the Ardmore Institute of Health.
Vaccination has historically and remains one of the most cost-effective and safest forms of medicine today. Along with basic understanding of germ theory and sanitation, vaccination, over the past 50 years, has transformed lives and economies in both rich and poor countries by its direct impact on human and animal life--resulting in the eradication of small pox, huge reductions in the burden of previously common human and animal diseases such as polio, typhoid, measles in human medicine and contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, foot-and-mouth disease, screwworm and hog cholera and the verge of eradicating brucellosis, tuberculosis, and pseudorabies in veterinary medicine. In addition vaccination along with other animal production changes has provided the ability to produce otherwise unaffordable animal protein and animal health worldwide. The landscape however on which vaccinology was discovered and applied over the past 200 years, even in the past 10 years has and is undergoing continuous change. For vaccination as a public health tool to have its greatest impacts in human and veterinary medicine, these great medical sciences will have to come together, policy-relevant science for sustainable conservation in developing and developed countries needs to become the norm and address poverty (including lack of basic health care) in communities affected by conservation, and to consider costs and benefits (perceived or not) affecting the well-being of all stakeholders, from the local to the multinational. The need to return to and/or develop new education-based models for turning the tide from the heavily return-on-investment therapeutic era of the last century into one where the investment into the preventative sciences and medicine lead to sustainable cultural and cost-effective public health and economic changes of the future is never more evident than today. The new complex problems of the new millennium will require new educational models that train para- and professional people for thinking and solving complex inter-related biological, ecological, public-, political/economic problems. The single profession that is best positioned to impact vaccinology is Veterinary Medicine. It's melding with human medicine and their role in future comparative and conservation-based programs will be critical to the successful application of vaccines into the 21st century.
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