The Teaching Kitchen Research

Research

The Teaching Kitchen: Advancing the Food as Medicine Movement

The Teaching Kitchen is a food and nutrition research hub, advancing the Food as Medicine movement. Our research includes community-based practices, implementation science, and clinical studies. We focus on the following key topics:

  • Foundational Research: We design and evaluate clinical care models, educational materials, curricula, and assessment tools to establish effective, evidence-based approaches for integrating food into healthcare practice.
  • Nutrition Science: Our research assesses the potential impact of medically tailored dietary interventions on specific health outcomes, medical conditions, and healthcare utilization.
  • Behavior Change: We investigate how nutrition education influences health behaviors, focusing on improving health metrics and quality of life.
  • Training and Continuing Education: We offer clinical and student training programs to deepen participants’ understanding of the connection between nutrition and health. Our research aims to enhance patient-centered counseling, reduce provider burnout, and increase awareness of resources.
  • Health Equity: We build and test programs to support access to nourishing food and education in partnership with historically marginalized people by supporting the creation of community-defined and owned research.
  • Food Systems: We examine how food systems impact health, sustainability, and equity and develop actionable solutions that address these challenges and benefit diverse populations.

Research is supported by interprofessional collaborations, including Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine: Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research. To learn more, visit our website.

Interested in Research Partnerships?
Contact Olivia Thomas at olivia.thomas@bmc.org. Sign up for our Teaching Kitchen Research Quarterly Newsletter for updates, publications, and partnership opportunities.

Active Research Projects

  • Validating a Teaching Kitchen Quality Improvement Survey
  • Community and Health System Partnered Food-Based Health-Related Social Needs Services for Pregnant People
  • Food Explorers: Efficacy of Multimodal and Multidisciplinary Feeding Therapy on Dietary Variety and Parental Stress Associated with Mealtimes
  • Teaching Kitchen Curriculum for Mental Health
  • Culinary Nutrition Interprofessional Certificate Program
  • Developing a Comprehensive Toolkit for Establishing Growing Spaces in Boston with Community Partners

2024

Researchers from BMC involved in these projects are highlighted in bold.*

  • Thomas, O. W., Liang, L., Getzoff, E., Silver, S., Peters, J., & Fuentes, L. (2024, September). Enhancing cultural humility in food is medicine services: A mixed-methods investigation of patient food and dietary preferences. In Healthcare (Vol. 12, No. 3, p. 100749).
  • Albin, J. L., Thomas, O. W., Marvasti, F. F., & Reilly, J. M. (2024). Perspective: There and Back Again: A 40-Year Perspective on Physician Nutrition Education. Advances in Nutrition, 100230.
  • Eisenberg, D. M., Cole, A., Maile, E. J., Salt, M., Armstrong, E., Leib, E. B., ... .Thomas, O.W & Edgar, L. (2024). Proposed nutrition competencies for medical students and physician trainees: a consensus statement. JAMA network open, 7(9), e2435425-e2435425.
  • Thomas, O., Mirsky, J., Gonzalez, N., Wadkins, B., & Albin, J. (2024). A Recipe For Successful Food Is Medicine Programs: Food Plus People. Health Affairs Forefront.
  • Thomas, O., Badaracco, C., & Alexander, L. C. (2024). Food: A Vital Ingredient In Transforming Obesity Care. Health Affairs Forefront.
  • Badaracco, C., Farshad, M., Albin, J., Thomas, O. (2024). Prescription for Change: Health Care Professionals and Advocacy for Farm Bill Reform. Annals of Internal Medicine, 177.12 (2024): 1725-1727.
  • Thomas, O. W., Reilly, J. M., Wood, N. I., & Albin, J. (2024). Culinary Medicine: Needs and Strategies for Incorporating Nutrition into Medical Education in the United States. Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development, 11, 23821205241249379.
  • Fredericks, L., Thomas, O., Imamura, A., MacLaren, J., McClure, A., Khalil, J., & Massa, J. (2024). Will a Programmatic Framework Integrating Food Is Medicine Achieve Value on Investment? Journal of General Internal Medicine, 1-7.
  • Thomas, O. W., Reilly, J. M., Wood, N. I., & Albin, J. (2024). Culinary Medicine: Needs and Strategies for Incorporating Nutrition into Medical Education in the United States. Journal of Medical Education and Curricular Development, 11, 23821205241249379.
  • Croxford, S., Stirling, E., MacLaren, J., McWhorter, J. W., Frederick, L., & Thomas, O. W. (2024). Culinary medicine or culinary nutrition? Defining terms for use in education and practice. Nutrients, 16(5), 603.
  • Croxford, S., MacLaren, J., Stirling, E., & Thomas, O. W. (2024). Interprofessional Culinary Medicine Education As Dietitian-led Translational Food-first Nutrition Training. Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research, 85(3), 366-366.

2019-2023

  • Thomas, O., Badaracco, C., & Akabas, S. (2023). Why Current 'Food Is Medicine' Solutions Are Falling Short. Health affairs forefront.
  • Thomas, O.W, McManus, C., Badaracco, C., MacLaren, J., Mason, A., McWhorter, J. W. (2023) Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Taking the Lead in Teaching Kitchen. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
  • Donovan, K., Thomas, O. W., Sweeney, T., Ryan, T. J., Kytomaa, S., Zhao, M., ... & Lenders, C. (2023). Eat to Treat: The Methods and Assessments of a Culinary Medicine Seminar for Future Physicians and Practicing Clinicians. Nutrients, 15.
  • Ciszak, L., Drexler, A., Kay, I., Jortberg, B., Callen, E., Lanigan, A., ... & Weinstein, O. (2022). Medically tailored meal kits as a means of decreasing healthcare utilization in primary care patients with heart failure.
  • Weinstein, O., Donovan, K., McCarthy, A. C., Hiralall, L., Allen, L., Koh, W., & Apovian, C. M. (2021). Nourishing underserved populations despite scarcer resources: adaptations of an urban safety net hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. American Journal of Public Health, 111(4), 663-666.
  • Musicus, A. A., Vercammen, K. A., Fulay, A. P., Moran, A. J., Burg, T., Allen, L., ... & Rimm, E. B. (2019). Implementation of a rooftop farm integrated with a teaching kitchen and preventive food pantry in a hospital setting. American Journal of Public Health, 109(8), 1119-1121.