Every day, our staff and volunteers witness the impact of our medically tailored meals and nutrition intervention. But aside from first-hand experience, research and data collected around medically tailored meals shows how services like ours can improve overall health and can slow or stop disease progression.

When we first began serving individuals with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes in 2019, we committed to further evaluating the impact of our service through a third-party evaluator.

In October 2019, Mama’s Kitchen launched our two-year Diabetes Nutrition Pilot Program. As with our other Home-Delivered Meal Service programs, the Diabetes Pilot aimed to prevent complications and disease progression by removing barriers to healthy nutrition and improving self-management skills. With an estimated 9.4% of San Diego County adults living with type 2 diabetes, which is also ranked as the county’s seventh leading cause of death, this Pilot had important potential to help thousands of community members.

To measure the impact and effectiveness of the pilot, Mama’s Kitchen commissioned The Caster Center for Nonprofit and Philanthropic Research at the University of San Diego to conduct a third-party evaluation.

We are pleased to share the evaluation results with our stakeholders.

Overall, the findings from this two-year study suggests that program participants:

• improved healthy dietary habits,
• enhanced physical health,
• and boosted confidence and motivation to manage diabetes.

During the Pilot, we provided more than 90,000 meals to 299 San Diego County residents experiencing type 2 diabetes, with half of these individuals being insulin treated.

Findings from our Diabetes Pilot Program showed, on average, graduates experienced:

 

With these positive outcomes, Mama’s Kitchen has made the Diabetes Nutrition Program a permanent part of our Home-Delivered Meal Service and will continue to change the lives of San Diegans with type 2 diabetes through nutrition intervention.