Background

Driscoll Health Plan (DHP), a non-profit community-based health insurance plan serving South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley introduced the Nurture Program in collaboration with Factor Health Labs in the Population Health department of Dell Medical School, UT Austin.

Goal

This initiative aimed to improve maternal and newborn health by expanding access to nutrition education and food purchasing support for pregnant women and assess practical concerns around future scalability via health plans.

Conclusion

The Nurture Program demonstrates how patient-centered social interventions can be effectively integrated into member support within a health plan’s existing infrastructure. By addressing nutritional needs and providing practical nutritional education, this pilot program showed promise in improving maternal and newborn health outcomes. Based on outcome size, the program also showed potential for reducing healthcare costs net of program implementation costs. As a scalable model, Nurture illustrates how health plans can incorporate nutritional support programs to enhance outcomes and better engage high-risk populations. Plans might consider alignment of a potential program with current organizational infrastructure, gaps and the ability and cost to fill such gaps in areas such as enrollment and implementation, including assessing any potential benefits accrued when scaling delivery.