Author Interview: Dr. Kevin G. Volpp on “Food Is Medicine: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association”
AHA Journals
Dr. Chen: To start, could you share what inspired you and the team to develop this advisory, and what were some of the key challenges and highlights during its creation?
Dr. Volpp: In developing a major new initiative, we wanted to use this advisory to take stock of the Food Is Medicine field and determine where the major gaps and opportunities are. Pulling together a lot of information and coming up with a succinct synthesis is always a challenge, but the team was great and everyone contributed a lot in making that happen.
Dr. Chen: The advisory emphasizes human-centered design as a guiding principle. In this context, what does “human-centered” mean for the proposed research agenda and practical implementation?
Dr. Volpp: An insight from working on the advisory is that engagement rates with FIM programs (and many health interventions in general) is often far below 100%. We need to figure out how to design these programs to meet people where they are using human-centered design so that they can be as engaging and effective as possible. We have been providing expert guidance in human-centered design to project teams to help them with project design.