Prevention & lipidsRandomised controlled trial
Designing Medically Tailored Meal Interventions: The Food as Medicine for Families (FAME-F) Factorial Randomized Clinical Trial
- 2×2 factorial randomized comparative effectiveness trial
- intention-to-treat
Authors' conclusion
Providing MTM to the entire household does not necessarily improve the focal individual’s diet quality, relative to feeding that individual alone. MTM programs could choose which delivery strategy to adopt based on considerations other than participant mental health.
Study context
- Population
- Adults with control over dietary intake in New England receiving medically tailored meals (MTM)randomized
- Participants
- Ninety-three adults
- Comparison
- dose and delivery
- feed the familyn = 46
- feed the individualn = 47
- dedicated drivern = 43
- commercial shippern = 50
Primary result
As reported in the abstract
Dose dimension: Healthy Eating Index 2020 diet quality score (range, 0-100; higher = greater adherence); delivery dimension: de Jong Gierveld loneliness scale (range, 0-11; greater = more loneliness) · 12 weeks
feed the individual
61.4
Healthy Eating Index score
feed the family
62.5
Healthy Eating Index score
dedicated driver
7.1
loneliness score
commercial shipper
6.8
loneliness score
Difference (95% CI)
feed the individual vs feed the familyHealthy Eating Index score; direction of subtraction not stated; no significant difference
1.1(−22.6 to 24.9)
dedicated driver vs commercial shipperloneliness score; direction of subtraction not stated; no significant difference
0.4(−1.5 to 2.2)
Original publication
Designing Medically Tailored Meal Interventions: The Food as Medicine for Families (FAME-F) Factorial Randomized Clinical Trial. Circ Popul Health Outcomes. Published 1 April 2026. doi:10.1161/circoutcomes.125.012668
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it