A Model for Assessing and Treating Food Insecurity Among Cancer Survivors
Summary
- A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and the University of Florida is seeking ways to better identify cancer survivors with food insecurity.
- The key component of their work is a digital tool called MyCarePulse that will screen patients for food insecurity and malnutrition.
- A clinical trial will test the effectiveness of MyCarePulse, combined with nutrition education designed to improve the quality of survivors’ diets.
For some cancer survivors, financial toxicity and other social problems that can occur during treatment continue to compound after treatment is done.
Lack of access to healthy food is one such problem. Food insecurity among cancer survivors is estimated to be between 17% and 55%, significantly higher than the U.S. average.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and the University of Florida Health Cancer Center is seeking ways to better identify cancer survivors with food insecurity, effectively meet their needs and improve their quality of life.
Adding Social Context to Address Cancer Survivorship Outcomes, or ASCENT, is funded by the Florida Department of Health Innovation Grants, with the goal of helping cancer survivors across the state. The results could eventually help survivors across the country, said Tracy Crane, Ph.D., RDN, ASCENT’s co-principal investigator with UF’s Dejana Braithwaite, Ph.D.
“It was really important for us to find a way to work with existing social work and our survivorship program to figure out how we can routinely assess for food insecurity and, if identified, ensure we have resources for patients across the cancer continuum,” said Dr. Crane, the director of lifestyle medicine, prevention and digital health and co-leader of the Cancer Control Program at Sylvester.
Identifying Food Insecurity
The key component of ASCENT is a digital tool called MyCarePulse that will screen patients for food insecurity and malnutrition. It will be available in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. MyCarePulse is based on My Wellness Check, a tool implemented at Sylvester in 2022 that assesses the symptoms and needs of patients with cancer.
Phase 1 of the study is already underway. Researchers are interviewing providers and cancer survivors to understand their needs and gathering dietary assessments to evaluate the prevalence of food insecurity and how often it results in malnutrition.
“We think about malnutrition as something very chronic, but in cancer it can be acute,” explained Paola Rossi, M.D., clinical program director for lifestyle medicine at Sylvester and a co-investigator for ASCENT. “This disease is not only increasing nutritional demand, but the treatments themselves are, also, and survivors may have food insecurity on top of that.”
Researchers will refine MyCarePulse so that it effectively identifies food-insecure patients while being easy for survivors and providers to use.
“Because food security can be fluid, we want to know not only who has food insecurity, but how often we need to be assessing for it, and then what other resources we may need to connect those patients to, in addition to the actual food,” Dr. Crane said.
Clinical Trial Tests Additional Guidance
Phase 2 of ASCENT will be a clinical trial that tests the effectiveness of MyCarePulse combined with nutrition education designed to improve the quality of survivors’ diets.
All participants in the trial will receive standard survivorship care and have access to the new Sylvester Food Pharmacy, which opened in July 2025. But one group of participants will also receive guidance from clinical staff who are trained in nutrition knowledge and education.
Nutrition is complex and specialized during cancer treatment, Dr. Crane said, but people who have recently completed treatment are often looking for things they can do to improve their outcomes.
“ASCENT aims to understand how we can best meet the needs of our patients, not only identifying who needs food and getting food to them, but also helping them learn better nutrition practices to help them have overall healthier diets,” she said.
Helping Patients Now and in the Future
The researchers are already learning useful lessons during Phase 1, Dr. Crane said. For example, they’ve discovered that some patients who are food insecure don’t have a way to get to the food pharmacy, so they’re exploring options for distributing food through satellite sites.
When ASCENT is complete, the researchers hope not only to have a model for helping cancer survivors in Florida but also to make it scalable for cancer centers everywhere.
The project illustrates the importance of considering social context when caring for cancer patients and survivors— a cornerstone of Sylvester’s lifestyle medicine program.
“We know how interventions can change the trajectory of a patient’s lifespan and quality of life,” Dr. Rossi said. “ASCENT marries perfectly the ability to not only identify patients but give them a service that really impacts their cancer journey.”
Tags: cancer research, clinical trials, Dr. Paola Rossi, Dr. Tracy Crane, food insecurity, lifestyle medicine, My Wellness Check, Newsroom, nutrition, Sylverster Comprehensive Cancer Center, Sylvester Food Pharmacy