Elena Byhoff
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Families who cannot reliably get enough food have higher rates of chronic disease. They also face higher health care costs and use emergency care more often.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Social Science
- Topics
food insecurity
nutrition intervention
Medicaid
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Measure how a multi-part food insecurity program changes clinical outcomes in Medicaid enrollees with diabetes, hypertension or depression at a federally qualified health center, using a difference-in-difference comparison with two propensity-weighted comparison groups.
- Compare changes in total cost of care, emergency department visits and inpatient days between adult and child program participants and weighted comparison groups, using Medicaid administrative claims data.
- Identify factors that help or block scaling and sustaining the clinical-community food program, using the I-PARIHS implementation framework.
More about the research
Hospitals and clinics now increasingly offer food programs, but evidence that these programs improve health is mixed. Most programs simply hand out food to individuals as treatment, rather than working to prevent problems. Massachusetts Medicaid (MassHealth) created a natural experiment. Under a state demonstration, community-based organizations design food programs and run them together with health care organizations.
Why it matters
Food insecurity and its racial and ethnic disparities are tied to diabetes, depression, poorer disease management and higher costs. Rigorous evidence on whether a community-designed food program improves health and lowers costs could guide Medicaid programs and clinics serving low-income patients. Implementation findings could help health systems expand and sustain programs that work.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sae Takada
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Evaluate whether Whole Person Care-Los Angeles, a social care program for Medicaid enrollees, improves diabetes screening, retention in care, medication adherence and blood sugar control compared with propensity score-matched non-enrollees.
Devin Mann
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Develop community health worker training modules for remote blood pressure monitoring, plus electronic health record support tools, using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research and user-centered design.
Folasade May
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare a multilevel patient, provider and health-system intervention against usual care in a six-clinic cluster randomized trial, measuring colonoscopy completion within 6 months of an abnormal fecal immunochemical test (FIT) at an FQHC.
The school
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School: 29 labs on PI Pages, $350M a year on research, 55 research doctorates a year.
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