Can food be medicine? This nonprofit says ‘yes’ — and wants it covered by more insurers – MassLive.com

Steve Honyotski has lived through what doctors called “medical hell.”

A near-fatal car wreck in Westwood 20 years ago spiraled into months in the hospital, a medically induced coma and 14 abdominal surgeries. He had to learn to walk, talk and swallow again.

But as he continues to bear the effects of the devastating crash, Honyotski said he has benefited from an unlikely form of medicine: food.

At Community Servings, a Boston-based nonprofit, the notion that “food is medicine” serves as a guiding tenant.

The organization began 35 years ago and focused initially on preparing high-quality meals for people with HIV/AIDS who were dying of malnutrition, said David Waters, its CEO. Today, the mission has grown to serve people like Honyotski with a variety of chronic and serious illnesses, many of whom are also under severe economic stress.

Diabetes, cancer, kidney failure, HIV, heart disease and numerous other severe illnesses have direct relations to diet. Yet many people can’t manage the complex dietary needs associated with those diseases, particularly people in poverty. More than nine in 10 Community Servings clients live below 200% of the federal poverty line.

The people the organization serves are often not mobile, Waters said. “They’re unable to shop and cook for themselves. They’d have difficulty walking to a store, or carrying a bag of groceries, or standing at a stove for 15 mins.”

“We can provide them with good nutrition for themselves and their family to make sure they’re getting the best nutrition for their health issues,” he added.

A growing number of insurers are paying for temporary meal deliveries or teaching people how to cook and eat healthier foods. Benefits experts say the companies are warming to the idea that food, like medicine, can improve patients’ basic health and ultimately help keep them out of hospitals.

“People are finally getting comfortable with the idea that everybody saves money when you prevent certain things from happening or somebody’s condition from worsening,” Andrew Shea, a senior vice president with the online insurance broker eHealth, told the Associated Press in 2021.

Honyotski, 70, of Boston, faces a host of side effects from his medical ordeals, namely diabetes, gastrointestinal challenges and sometimes overwhelming fatigue that can force him to cancel plans at the last minute with family and friends when he cannot muster the energy to leave the house.

It also means cooking meals — with the shopping, preparation and on-his-feet effort involved — can be too much to handle, even though cooking has long brought Honyotski joy.

Where he can no longer prepare healthy, robust meals, Community Servings has stepped in.

The organization’s meals are medically tailored, cooked to meet the specific needs each client requires depending on their ailments. The meal for a cancer patient in chemotherapy is not necessarily the same as one for a person with heart disease. The meal for someone with diabetes may provide different nutrients than someone suffering from HIV.

“Essentially, we work with your doctor the same way your pharmacist does,” Waters said. “The pharmacist is making sure your medications react appropriately to treat your condition. We do the same with food.”

For Honyotski, the meals — delivered weekly to his Dorchester home — are available on the days he needs them most.

“Would I like to be doing more — yes. But my body doesn’t allow me,” Honyotski said. “When I’m just barely able to walk downstairs to get a glass of water, I can pop a meal in the microwave or a soup in the microwave. It makes it manageable for me.”

Each week, the organization crafts 16 different menus to meet the varied medical needs of roughly 7,000 clients spread across Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Meals are hand delivered to the extent possible, and shipped as needed.

And these aren’t TV dinners or freeze-dried-anything, Honyotski said. He raves about the Community Servings chicken soup and its Moroccan turkey with quinoa.

Now, the organization is launching a new venture.

Last week, it unveiled the AMPL Institute — the acronym stands for “Access to Medically tailored nutrition through Policy and Leadership” — to further bolster the concept of food as medicine through education, research and policy changes at the federal and state levels.

Among its central objectives will be to make medically tailored nutrition an established benefit in Medicare and Medicaid.

The Community Servings program is covered by some insurers in Massachusetts, most of which are through MassHealth. About 40% of the organization’s clients have its services covered by their insurers.

About a decade ago, Waters said Community Servings approached health care leaders in the Bay State with a question: “What would it take for you to pay us to feed people?”

They needed to show data, particularly evidence of a return on investment for health care systems.

By serving medically tailored meals to people who are severely ill, the research found, Community Servings saved health care providers 16% in costs on their most expensive patients. They were nearly half as likely to need to go to the hospital and 72% less likely to end up in a nursing home, Waters said.

He told the story of a woman whose diabetes was out of control before she joined the Community Servings program. About once a month, she would call an ambulance amid a scary spike in blood sugar. The ride to the hospital and emergency care cost thousands of dollars.

But with meals from the nonprofit tailored to help keep her blood sugar stable, the woman required no visits to the emergency and no ambulance rides in the first six months with Community Servings. Waters said data shows similar results for other people they serve.

He also said that preventing someone from staying a single night in the hospital due to poor nutrition can save the health care system enough money to feed them for six months.

The AMPL Institute aims to raise the number of insurers that cover meal programs — and expand coverage to similar providers nationwide.

“We’re trying to build a future where if you’re too sick to provide good nutrition for yourself or your family anywhere in the United States, you should have access to medically tailored nutrition through your health care,” Waters said.

Despite threats to nonprofit funding under the Trump administration, Community Servings sees bipartisan interest in improving Americans’ nutrition, particularly under new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Secretary Kennedy is particularly interested in healthy food and it remains to be seen how he and his department might operationalize that,” Waters said. “But there is alignment between what we provide and what he’s trying to put into place. Our meals are all made from scratch, working with local farmers and fishermen. It’s a healthy, unprocessed diet.”

Honyotski said his physical condition has improved on the program. Self-described as overweight, he has lost 35 pounds since beginning with Community Servings.

“The access to healthy food on a consistent basis is necessary for our health,” he said. “Food truly is medicine.”