Authors:
Amanda Bank, MPH – Center for Health Care Strategies
Kathryn Jantz, MSW, MPH – HealthBegins
Julian Xie, MD, MPP – Share Our Strength
Elena Rees, MS – Share Our Strength
Katrina Scott, MPhil – Share Our Strength
With the growing interest in Food is Medicine (FIM) interventions, there is an opportunity to strengthen connections between FIM and other food and nutrition assistance programs. We discuss how medically tailored meals (MTM), medically tailored groceries (MTG), and produce prescriptions (PRx), which are ideally healthcare-funded and USDA-funded federal nutrition benefits such as SNAP and WIC, are complementary interventions within the FIM spectrum for improving the diet and health of children and families.
This brief highlights the value for state Medicaid systems in delivering comprehensive FIM programming alongside existing federal nutrition benefits, and equips FIM advocates and practitioners with the necessary data to support this integrative approach. Read this brief to gain insights into current SNAP, WIC, and healthcare-funded FIM programs and how they improve the lives of families experiencing food and nutrition insecurity.
Key Messages
Medicaid-funded FIM, SNAP, and WIC are complementary rather than duplicative, both programmatically and legally.
- To comply with federal regulations on non-duplication, state Medicaid agencies have established processes to check whether enrollees already participate in SNAP and WIC and, if not, assist them in applying. Our brief discusses examples in Michigan, North Carolina, and Massachusetts.
- Embedding this coordination within existing systems and Medicaid enrollee touchpoints ensures efficiency and maximizes access to nutrition support.
Medicaid-funded FIM programs work together with SNAP and WIC to expand healthy food access as part of whole-person and whole-family care to prevent and treat diet-related diseases.
- MTM, MTG, and PRx are typically intensive and time-limited, allowing participants to “learn by doing” as they receive food and nutrition education.
- These skills can then be applied when using SNAP, WIC, or personal income. This continuity of nutrition care fosters long-term healthy eating patterns and improves health outcomes.
- Our brief presents specific examples of how families use these programs together.
The 2025 Budget Reconciliation Bill’s cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, including the termination of SNAP-Ed, reduce the availability of nutrition education and access to nutritious foods among Medicaid-enrolled children, mothers, older adults, and individuals with disabilities. Therefore, we need to maximize efficient and well-coordinated access to Medicaid-funded FIM programs, SNAP, and WIC to prevent diet-related disease onset and exacerbations.
Recommendations
- The healthcare sector, including providers and payors, could consider establishing healthcare-driven SNAP and WIC navigation assistance as a standard of care alongside more tailored Medicaid-funded FIM services like MTM, MTG, and PRx.
- State Medicaid agencies could strengthen FIM service delivery if they:
- Embed clear requirements into Managed Care Organization (MCO) and/or healthcare provider contracts for SNAP and WIC navigation assistance to be conducted by healthcare teams or community-based organizations (CBOs) as part of FIM service delivery workflows.
- Provide guidance and support around data-sharing infrastructure and evaluation to ensure that MCOs and CBOs are incentivized and accountable to provide SNAP and WIC navigation assistance.
- State governments could benefit from updated guidance on the complementarity between healthcare-funded FIM and existing USDA programs like WIC and SNAP from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Given that both WIC and healthcare-funded FIM provide tailored nutritious foods, such guidance could support the Make America Healthy Again Commission’s recommendations to increase access to healthy whole foods through government-funded programs. CMS guidance would ideally:
- Reinforce the availability of multiple policy pathways and flexibilities to integrate FIM into Medicaid, including but not limited to In Lieu of Services (ILOS), 1115 waivers, value-added services, care coordination and community health worker provisions, Home and Community-Based Services waivers, CHIP, and value-based purchasing contracts.
- Such guidance could clarify braiding and blending funding from Medicaid and USDA.
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