Delivering food resources and kitchen skills to older adults with food insecurity and hypertension

Abstract Non-Hispanic Black adults experience higher rates of food insecurity, poor diet quality, and hypertension compared with their non-Hispanic White counterparts. Delivering Food Resources and Kitchen Skills (FoRKS) is an integrated intervention that concurrently addresses food insecurity, nutrition literacy, and chronic disease self-management among older patients at a Federally Qualified Health Center. Two clinical dietitians led virtual hypertension self-management, cooking skills, and nutrition education classes twice per week for 16 weeks. Participants registered for classes, ordered free meal ingredients, and received encouragement from the dietitians through the FoRKS mobile technology application. This study presents diet quality descriptive results from the FoRKS pilot intervention conducted at Eskenazi Health from September 2021 to January 2022 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Participants (n=13) with hypertension (systolic blood pressure ≥120 mm Hg) and who identified as food insecure per the 18-item US Household Food Security Survey Module completed the 2018-version of the National Cancer Institute’s Automated Self-Administered 24-hour (ASA24) Dietary Assessment Tool at baseline and post-intervention assessments. Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2015 scores range from 0-100 and were calculated from ASA24 data. Participants were non-Hispanic Black (n=12) or non-Hispanic White (n=1) with mean age 58 years (range 53-65 years). Mean±SD HEI-2015 scores improved from 51.5±11.9 at baseline to 55.2±12.5 after the intervention. This preliminary data supports further investigation into the efficacy of integrated lifestyle interventions, i.e., FoRKS, using a randomized controlled study design. Addressing food and culinary skills can lead to improvements in diet quality that may translate to improved disease management among diverse older adults.