Nourishing beginnings: Improved nutrition education and grocery vouchers help improve maternal health

Good nutrition and early prenatal care are foundational to healthy pregnancies and safer deliveries, leading to better long-term health for moms and babies. Yet for many expectant mothers, basic nutritional support and consistent prenatal engagement with healthcare providers remain out of reach.

A coalition of leading healthcare companies operating in Georgia, including Amerigroup Georgia, Avesis, and Agilix, joined Uber Health in late 2023 to begin testing a simple yet powerful idea: Can targeted nutritional support in the form of education, clinical guidance, and vouchers for groceries help improve birth outcomes and infant health in hard-to-serve populations? Based on the results of the initial pilot program, says Don Trainor, Director of Quality and Product Innovation at Avesis, “the answer appears to be a resounding yes.”

Addressing a persistent gap in healthy birth outcomes

Many people are surprised to learn that maternal health outcomes in the United States lag those of other developed countries. In the state of Georgia, the differences are especially stark, with some of the poorest birth outcomes in the nation, particularly among Medicaid-covered mothers.

Medicaid covers nearly 50% of all births in the US,* and pregnant women who struggle financially are especially vulnerable to prenatal and postpartum nutritional and medical care deficiencies. Plus, traditional care models often lack the flexibility or resources to address underlying needs such as nutrition education and healthy food access.

A pilot designed around nutrition, support, and access

To tackle these gaps, Avesis and Agilix worked with Amerigroup Georgia’s Medicaid plan, Amerigroup, to launch a pilot maternal health program in Georgia. “Our initiative is centered on the idea that nutrition is a key modifiable factor in pregnancy,” says Trainor. “We believe giving expectant mothers tools and the ability to act on nutrition guidance with Uber vouchers can make a real difference.”

The 800 women who enrolled in the pilot program received some or all of the following:

• Personalized nutritional counseling with registered dietitians

• A scale to help track weight gain during pregnancy and report the data through cellular connection

• A $150 Uber Eats voucher for completing prenatal counseling and another $150 voucher for postpartum engagement, all with the goal of helping them access healthy foods aligned with their care plans

“The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends nutritional counseling, healthy eating, and weight monitoring during pregnancy,” says Trainor, “but those recommendations often get overshadowed by other priorities. We saw an opportunity to bring that guidance to life, giving moms the tools and support to make better nutrition decisions, with the hope of improving outcomes for both mom and baby.”

Improved outcomes from program participation

Data for the 511 participants who delivered their babies at a facility linked to the study showed encouraging trends. “Members who participated during the entire duration of the program were about 7% more likely to have a vaginal birth and had about a half a day shorter average length of [hospital] stay,” Trainor shares. “That aligns with our expectations about how nutrition and early engagement can influence health outcomes.”

About two-thirds of those 511 participants were also referred to a case manager to help connect them with additional resources to address social determinants of health, such as transportation challenges, food insecurity, and other barriers to care.

Uber Health makes it easier for participants to act on nutritional guidance

While Avesis and Amerigroup led the clinical and data components, Uber Health played a vital role by helping participants act on the nutritional guidance they received. “Uber Health was a great partner throughout this pilot, giving our team an easy way to create, distribute, and track vouchers,” says Trainor. “And the simplicity of the Uber Eats grocery vouchers gave participants a tangible way to apply what they were learning in their nutritional counseling and helped form a safety net that we believe made a difference in outcomes.”

Helping to identify risks early

Beyond immediate outcomes, the pilot surfaced insights that may help inform future care models. By combining data from nutrition assessments, weight tracking, socioeconomic surveys, and clinical history, Avesis identified 4 key factors that together could predict birth outcomes with approximately 77% accuracy: maternal age, BMI (body mass index), responses to nutrition baseline questions, and social determinant indicators.

“We found that a combination of 4 factors was highly predictive of outcomes,” Trainor says. “This opens an additional pathway to identify high-risk pregnancies early, allowing us to intervene more effectively.”

Looking ahead: from pilot to playbook

The pilot has sparked interest among health organizations and policymakers as a promising model for integrating preventive care, nutrition access, and targeted outreach into maternal health strategies. Stakeholders are exploring how to codify the pilot into a blueprint or white paper that could support funding, replication, and broader adoption.

“This was certainly a labor of love,” says Iris Knight-Hamilton, Head of Nurse Case Management, Amerigroup Georgia. “With the outcomes we’re seeing, we want this published so others can adapt and build on what we’ve learned.”

While challenges remain, including securing sustainable funding and streamlining early pregnancy identification, the results suggest that improving nutrition access and prenatal engagement can be an effective part of a broader strategy to support healthier moms and babies.