Fresh Food Farmacy by Geisinger is an innovative program: doctors prescribe food as medicine! :) The program is targeted at low-income families which are at risk of not being able to buy fresh food like fruits and veggies.

Overall, FFF is not Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB); it focuses on ADA (American Diabetics Association) guidelines, which are much better than SAD (Standard American Diet). The two main problems with SAD are (a) high intake of processed foods, and (b) high intake of animal products (which results in fiber deficiency, for example; fiber intake in SAD is much lower than USDA guidelines).

As we move along this spectrum of food systems: SAD → ADA → WFPB → strict WFPB, we continually make progress in two directions: (a) major reduction in processed food intake, and (b) major reduction in animal product intake. In 'strict WFPB', animal products and processed foods diminish to zero! For somebody accustomed to SAD, making a sudden jump to 'strict WFPB' is drastic. Geisinger's FFF (Fresh Food Farmacy) program takes a gentle approach: it nudges people from SAD → ADA.

Effectiveness: This article (CNBC, 2018) reports:

"On average, patients in the program have seen their A1C levels drop from a pre-enrollment level of 9.6 percent to 7.5 percent, Feinberg and colleagues wrote in an April article in NEJM."

"With operational costs of $2,400 per patient each year, early findings show costs for patients in Geisinger Health Plan dropped by 80 percent: from an average of $240,000 per member per year, to $48,000 per member per year."

Reports: Prescribing Food as a Specialty Drug by Feinberg et al, NEJM, April 2018.

Clinical Trial: Fresh Food Farmacy: A Randomized Controlled Trial (April 2019) is a proposal to conduct a randomized controlled trial. This writeup has a good overview of FFF.

Playlist: Playlist with FFF recipes (2019) by Hudson Headwaters Health Network who started a pilot program with FFF in 2019.