PHILADELPHIA, PA — The MANNA Institute has granted a $400,000 award to Kristin Rising, M.D., M.S.H.P., Director of the Jefferson Center for Connected Care and Professor of Emergency Medicine at Jefferson Health. The funding will support Dr. Rising’s project “Nutrition Support Assessment Tool (NSAT) Refinement and Pilot Implementation Trial.” This initiative aims to refine and test the NSAT as a screening tool to identify patients’ individual nutrition needs and establish a more efficient referral process to community nutrition organizations.
Dr. Rising’s latest project follows her previous research funded by the MANNA Institute, titled “Identifying & Testing Patient-Important Outcomes to Assess the Efficacy of Medically Tailored Meals for Oncology Patients.” That study concluded that cancer patients considered nutrition interventions successful when contributing to weight maintenance, increased food satisfaction and intake, and improved quality of life. The study also identified the need for a tool to measure the impact of nutrition interventions on cancer patients, which this new project will address.
The NSAT, developed by Dr. Rising and her team, presents a systematic approach to providing individualized nutrition referrals. It incorporates various patient needs, including medical, nutritional, and social aspects, into decision-making for nutrition referrals such as medically tailored meals, grocery boxes, or food vouchers. The upcoming research project will involve patient interviews to refine the NSAT and an implementation trial where the NSAT will guide nutrition-related service referrals for a set of Jefferson patients.
Moreover, the team will monitor the entire nutrition services referral process, following and re-evaluating patients over four months to determine the optimal service durations for maximum health benefits. The feasibility of transitioning patients between services as their needs evolve will also be examined. Long-term follow-up with patients will help identify factors that either assist or create barriers to nutrition services.
The project aims to ensure that patients most in need of, and likely to benefit from, MANNA’s medically tailored meals and nutrition counseling services can access them. These services have already been shown to reduce the risk of malnutrition among MANNA clients by 34%. The research will also influence MANNA’s approach to referring individuals to other nutrition resources once they complete their prescribed MANNA meals.
The generous “Founding Eight” philanthropists of the MANNA Institute made this award possible. Their financial contributions have helped establish the MANNA Institute and support its ongoing research projects.
For more information about the MANNA Institute, visit mannapa.org/mannainstitute/. To learn more about the Jefferson Center for Connected Care, visit jefferson.edu/connectedcare.
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