2022 Update on Five Plus Nuts and Beans for Kidneys - After Years of Hard Work, the Five Plus Nuts and Beans for Kidneys Study Shows Promising Results

Many Black Americans face barriers to eating foods that are healthy, and poor diet can lead to high rates of high blood pressure, kidney disease, obesity and heart disease. The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity’s “Five Plus Nuts and Beans for Kidneys” study explored whether coaching on food choices could improve kidney health and blood pressure among Black Americans who live in the Baltimore area.

BACKGROUND

Participants in “Five Plus Nuts and Beans for Kidneys” study were split into either a “Coached” or “Self-Directed” group. The Coached group received a weekly grocery allowance of $30 for four months plus weekly coaching on selecting healthy foods. The Self-Directed group also received the weekly $30 grocery allowance for four months and a single session about healthy eating, but they made their own weekly food choices without coaching. The study looked at whether coaching improved the participants’ kidney health, blood pressure, and healthy food choices compared to no coaching.

PROGRESS

The “Five Plus Nuts and Beans for Kidneys” study team enrolled 150 participants between February 2018 and August 2021 as planned. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and temporary shut-down of research activities at Johns Hopkins, we were unable to complete the study for 8 of the participants. We ended up with 142 participants and completed data collection last December!

We were excited that the “Five Plus Nuts and Beans for Kidneys” study was selected for the High-Impact Clinical Trials session of the American Society of Nephrology Kidney Week meeting in November 2022! A summary of the presentation can be found here. Several members of the team also worked on an additional project that was presented at that same meeting. That project reported on the use of effective blood pressure and diabetes medications among the Five Plus study participants. A description and findings from that project can be found here.

IN OTHER NEWS…

We continued working on the projects we described in our last update that are related to the “Five Plus Nuts and Beans for Kidneys” study. One of them was the PhotoVoice Project, where research volunteers took pictures and made comments about the markets, gardens and other sources of food in their Baltimore-area neighborhoods. We held an event in June 2022, entitled “Seated at the Table: Working Together to Promote a Healthy and Inclusive Food Environment in Baltimore,” to share these findings with the research volunteers, the community, and stakeholders. More information and a video summary of the event is available here. We are also happy to report that the PhotoVoice paper has been published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, which you can read more about here!

Last year, we also announced funding of a new project in partnership with our Five Plus Community Advisory Board member Richard Francis, best known as “Farmer Chippy,” that studies a farm fresh food distribution program that he operates at his Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm. In October, we finished enrolling 75 participants of the distribution program who completed questionnaires about their health and eating patterns, and 25 of them also participated in interviews to learn more about how easily they are able to get the food provided by the farm, and their views on whether it improves their health. The data are now being analyzed. The project aims to help us learn better ways of filling the needs of communities served by urban farm food distribution programs.

The Five Plus team is excited to share the findings of the Urban Farm Project in the near future, and a few other related projects we have been working on, through discussions with the research volunteers, and with local, stakeholder, and scientific communities. Please stayed tuned for these announcements!