The study, “Insurance-Provided Grocery Assistance and Health Care Outcomes Among Patients With Diabetes,” published in the August 2026 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®), examined health plan members with type 2 diabetes who enrolled in an Elevance Health plan offering $1200 to $3000 annually in grocery assistance, finding an associated 3.1-percentage-point decrease in the prevalence of diabetes with complications along with improved adherence to diabetes medications, without any corresponding increase in overall health care utilization. The retrospective study compared roughly 400 members who selected the grocery benefit plan against a control group of members who were eligible but did not enroll.
Elevance Health publicized the findings from its own research arm, Carelon Research, framing the results as evidence that grocery benefits can be a practical and scalable lever for health plans and employers. The company quoted Kofi Essel, MD, its food as medicine director and a study coauthor, who said nutritious food access can help people manage their health without requiring more intensive levels of care, and positioned the results alongside its broader portfolio of food-as-medicine initiatives, including produce prescriptions and medically tailored groceries.
A systematic review of the history of CMS's coverage with evidence development (CED) policy found that most CED programs persist for more than a decade before their data collection requirements are retired, despite the policy's original intent of being a fast, evidence-generating pathway to Medicare coverage. The study, “Coverage With Evidence Development: Where Are We Now?” was published in the August 2022 issue of AJMC and authored by Emily P. Zeitler, MD, and colleagues.
The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) cited the AJMC findings in formal comments submitted to HHS on the National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease, using the decade-long average CED timeline to argue that the policy has functioned less as an expedited access pathway and more as a regulatory holding pattern, pointing to the 10-year CED period for Alzheimer's PET scans as a case in point. NTU drew on Zeitler and colleagues' recommendation that CMS improve CED's transparency and predictability to support its call for reforms, including a “regulatory sandbox” model, ahead of further Medicare coverage decisions on anti-amyloid Alzheimer's therapies.
The interview, “Lifestyle Factors Offer Actionable Targets in MASLD Management: Zobair M. Younossi, MD,” published on AJMC.com, covered data presented at the European Association for the Study of the Liver Congress in May 2026 showing that patients with metabolic dysfunction–associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in the highest tertile of ultra-processed food intake had nearly twice the prevalence of advanced liver fibrosis compared with those in the lowest tertile. In the interview, Younossi, chairman of the Global NASH Council, offered clinicians a practical benchmark for flagging ultra-processed foods and identified alcohol use and physical inactivity as additional, frequently underreported drivers of disease progression.
The Sun Papers built a patient-facing explainer around the AJMC interview, leading with the near-doubling of advanced fibrosis risk tied to ultra-processed food intake and relaying Younossi's kitchen-ingredient test for identifying those foods. The outlet also pulled forward Younossi's estimate that alcohol contributes to 10% to 15% of MASLD cases and referenced a separate AJMC interview with Younossi on how a shift toward fibrosis-focused end points could reshape metabolic dysfunction–associated steatohepatitis clinical trial design.
The study, "Impact of the Collaborative Care Model on Medical Spending," published in the October 2023 issue of AJMC, evaluated a collaborative care program across 8 primary care practices, using propensity score matching to compare 569 patients who received collaborative care with matched controls. The study found that patients' mean total medical spending began falling after their third month in the program and dropped below control-group spending by month 7, with no net increase in overall health care costs.
Hoodline cited the AJMC findings of $29.35 in per-member, per-month medical savings tied to Collaborative Care Model implementation, driven largely by fewer inpatient stays and emergency department visits, as evidence for why hospitals are turning to vendors like Westlake Village-based Precise Behavioral Inc., which just raised $14.2 million in venture funding led by A1 Health Ventures.
