Evaluation of Medicaid Grocery Gift Cards & Nutrition Education Program for Pregnant Women on Maternal and Infant Outcomes

This record describes a quality improvement program (called "Nurture") piloted by Driscoll Health Plan, which included nutrition education and food purchase support offered to a subset of pregnant women aged 30 years and above and covered by the Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO) plan in their "STAR" and "CHIP" programs during October 2022 and July 2023.

Factor Health lab at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin will do a secondary data analysis to evaluate the impact of DHP's program.

Driscoll Health Plan (DHP) is a non-profit, community-based health insurance plan that provides coverage to South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley communities. Their insurance products include STAR Medicaid, STAR Kids, CHIP, and CHIP Perinatal.

With input from Factor Health lab at Dell Medical School, DHP introduced the Nurture program for its members as a quality improvement initiative, designed to expand members' access to nutrition education and food purchase support to improve health and pregnancy outcomes.

Nurture included up to 8 packages mailed every four weeks until the member reaches the end of pregnancy. Each package included USD $40 in the form of gift cards to a large-chain grocery store, a healthy eating information sheet selected from Brighter Bites (https://brighterbites.org/), a set of three recipes, and nutrition-related Frequently Asked Questions during pregnancy (in four out of the eight packages). Members also received two 30-minute nutritional consultations over the phone.