The Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program (GusNIP) awards $483,612 to School-Based Produce Prescription evaluation

Published: January 9, 2024

Brighter Bites, in partnership with UTHealth Houston School of Public Health has received $483,612 in federal funding as part of USDA GusNIP grants. This grant will help examine, assess, and address nutritional needs through the Brighter Bites’ home-delivery Produce Prescription Program. The program utilizes DoorDash to deliver fresh fruits and vegetables to students and their families at four school-based health clinics in Galena Park ISD, Texas. UTHealth Houston will serve as the design and evaluation expert, along with Legacy Community Health (Legacy), the largest Federally Qualifying Health Care Center (FQHC) in Texas, providing clinical oversight and management.

Brighter Bites directly engages with community members, partnering at local schools throughout the country. Brighter Bites is an evidence-based intervention program that provides fresh fruits and vegetables, paired with nutrition education and fun food experiences, to create measurable, long-term behavior change in children and their families. UTHealth Houston School of Public Health has been a longstanding partner of Brighter Bites since its inception in 2012. 

Principal Investigator of the UTHealth Houston subcontract, Ru-Jye (Lindi) Chuang, DrPH, MS, assistant professor of Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences and faculty member of the Center for Health Equity at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, and her team helped design this intervention. The intervention aims to bring stakeholders from distinct parts of the food and healthcare system together to foster shared understanding on improving participating households' nutrition and health status by prescribing fresh fruits and vegetables.  

Clinicians at Legacy will prescribe the produce prescriptions to pediatric patients (ages 3-18 and with a BMI > 85th percentile) and their families who are low-income and eligible for SNAP and Medicaid. Families will receive the produce and monthly nutrition education classes over a thirty-two- week period. 

The study will examine pediatric participants’ change in clinical outcomes (i.e., BMI, A1C, blood pressure, AST/ALT ratios, and lipid panels) along with their family’s food security status, nutritional habits, family rules around eating patterns, and mental and emotional health.  

GusNIP funds produce prescriptions such as this across the country. The results from this study will shed light on implementation outcomes and clinical effectiveness of produce prescription interventions among at-risk populations to help inform families and students of best practices to improve health outcomes at a national level.  

Co-investigators on this grant also include Christine Markham, PhD, and Shreela Sharma, PhD, RDN, LD.