---
type: source
title: "AHA 2025: Food is Medicine (DASH groceries + dietitian support) improved BP but reverted to baseline 6 months after program ended"
author: "Stephen Juraschek et al. (reported by STAT News)"
url: https://www.statnews.com/2025/11/10/aha-food-as-medicine-lowered-blood-pressure/
date: 2025-11-10
domain: health
secondary_domains: []
format: thread
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [food-is-medicine, hypertension, blood-pressure, DASH, food-insecurity, durability, structural-SDOH, AHA-2025]
---

## Content

Presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2025. Study examined whether home-delivered DASH-style groceries plus dietitian counseling could reduce blood pressure in Black adults living in food-insecure neighborhoods in Boston.

**Study arms:**
- Intervention: DASH groceries (home-delivered) + professional dietitian guidance
- Control: $500 monthly stipends to purchase food independently

**Duration:** 12-week active intervention

**Results at 12 weeks:**
- Groceries + dietitian support arm: statistically greater BP improvement vs. stipend-only
- Groceries + dietitian support arm: also greater LDL cholesterol reduction vs. stipend-only
- Blood sugar and BMI: no significant changes in either arm

**Critical finding — durability:**
**Six months after the program ended** — when grocery deliveries and stipends stopped — blood pressure AND LDL cholesterol had returned to where they were at the start of the study.

**Researcher quote (Stephen Juraschek):** "We did not build grocery stores in the communities that our participants were living in. We did not make the groceries cheaper for people after they were free during the intervention."

This is the critical gap between intervention and structural change: the food environment in the Boston neighborhoods where participants lived was unchanged. When the program stopped, participants returned to the same food environment — and disease regenerated.

The AHA funded 20 Food is Medicine pilot studies through its Health Care by Food initiative (launched 2024).

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is the pivotal finding for the structural food environment thesis. The study confirms: (1) dietary change → BP improvement is a real causal pathway (12-week results), AND (2) that pathway requires continuous structural support. The moment the food environment reverts, health outcomes revert. This is mechanistic confirmation of Session 16's key insight: the food environment doesn't just generate disease initially — it *continuously regenerates* it.

**What surprised me:** The durability failure is so complete — full reversion to baseline by 6 months. Not partial reversion, not maintenance of some benefit — complete return. This is the starkest possible evidence that episodic food assistance is insufficient without structural food environment change.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Effect size in mmHg (STAT article doesn't give specific numbers). The Kentucky MTM pilot (Session 17 archive) gives better quantitative data (-9.67 mmHg).

**KB connections:**
- From Session 16: AHA REGARDS cohort (UPF → 23% higher incident hypertension in 9.3 years, continuous inflammation mechanism) — the Boston study's reversion confirms the continuous regeneration mechanism
- From Session 16: digital health equity split (tailored works; generic fails; but even tailored reverts when the structural environment is unchanged)
- [[healthcare is a complex adaptive system requiring simple enabling rules not complicated management]] — the food environment is the system that overrides individual interventions
- [[medical care explains only 10-20 percent of health outcomes]] — even a targeted food intervention can't overcome the structural environment when it's removed

**CLAIM CANDIDATE:**
"Food-as-medicine interventions produce clinically significant BP and LDL improvements during active delivery but benefits fully revert to baseline when structural food environment support is removed, confirming the food environment as the proximate disease-generating mechanism rather than a modifiable behavioral choice"

This is a STRONG candidate — combines the positive result (it works when active) with the durability failure (structural change is required) into a single claim that challenges both the techno-optimist framing (deploy food programs and it's solved) and the behavioral framing (patients need to make better choices).

**Context:** AHA's Health Care by Food initiative is the leading US clinical trial infrastructure for food-as-medicine research. Stephen Juraschek is at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston). The STAT News coverage by Ron Winslow. The preprint of this study is on medRxiv (August 2025).

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)

PRIMARY CONNECTION: From Session 16: "UPF consumption causes hypertension through inflammation — food environment re-generates disease faster than clinical treatment addresses it"

WHY ARCHIVED: Provides experimental confirmation (RCT level) that dietary intervention works during active delivery but fails structurally when the program ends. This is the evidence that bridges mechanism (food environment causes BP) to policy prescription (structural change required, not episodic programs).

EXTRACTION HINT: The key claim is in the DURABILITY FAILURE, not the positive result. The positive result (BP improved during program) is expected and not novel. The reversion to baseline is the surprising, claim-worthy finding. Extract: "active food-as-medicine programs improve BP but don't create durable change without structural food environment transformation." Connect to the continuous inflammation mechanism.
