The following is a summary by Bernadette Gillis on School of Medicine .
Have you heard the term "Food is medicine"? Research from Duke published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine suggests that food-insecure older adults who received two weeks of home-delivered meals after hospital discharge had significantly lower short-term readmission rates.
The study involved 368 adults aged 60 or older who had been discharged from three Duke University Health System hospitals and were at risk of food insecurity or malnutrition. Half received meals; the other half did not.
Patients who received meals were less likely to be readmitted to the hospital than those who did not.
"During that immediate post-discharge period, patients can put their energy toward healing as opposed to [focusing on] 'I need to go find food,'" said Dr. Eugenia McPeek Hinz, the study's first and corresponding author and an assistant professor of medicine.
Researchers cautioned that the study cannot prove that meals directly caused the reduction in readmissions because it was an observational study rather than a randomized clinical trial.
Going forward, they plan to research whether timing and a longer-duration meal delivery program could improve readmission rates.
To learn more about the research, visit the School of Medicine .
