Grub Club helps kids, families incorporate more ‘renal-friendly’ nutrition
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Key takeaways:
- Interactive educational sessions with kids and their families produced better control of renal levels.
- Researchers hope to expand meal programs and further ensure adherence to the ‘renal-friendly’ diet.
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Off-unit sessions organized around games, resources, fresh food and meal preparation improved patient knowledge around nutrition and kidney disease, resulting in improved phosphorous levels.
“The Grub Clubs were meant to help patients and families learn about the renal-friendly diet, give them a chance to taste a meal that was ‘renal friendly’ and give them the recipe as a video so they could make the meal again at home,” Christine Burke, MSN, CRNP, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Healio. “We also implemented a report card program for patients so that they could monitor their progress and receive prizes if their lab values were within range.”
In the poster presented at the National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meetings, Burke and colleagues discussed their grant-funded Grub Club initiated in the pediatric dialysis unit in which families were invited to an off-unit 2-hour session on low phosphorous and low potassium foods, food labels, meal preparation and community resources. The club consisted of playing games with prizes to enhance learning, receiving renal-friendly meals and snacks with chef-prepared videos along with patient resources in swag bags. Fresh fruits and vegetables came from local community-supported farms.
Participants completed pre- and post-surveys and received incentives to participate in a 6-month report card program to monitor individual phosphorous levels.
The Grub Club included 16 families, of which 53% were Black and the median age was 11.5 years.
On average, families scored 59% correct on pretest questions and improved to 81% correct on posttest questions. Burke reported that families showed new knowledge regarding dark-colored soda and fast foods being high in phosphorous.
Participants gave feedback in which they were satisfied with the educational games, cooking video access and commitment to reading food labels and cooking renal-friendly foods.
Half of the participants enrolled in the report card program, and all but one (87.5%) showed improvement. Six (75%) maintained elevated yet stable phosphorous levels, one reduced levels and graduated early and one showed higher phosphorous levels.
“Off-site/out of unit education seemed to work very well. Patients and families had a good understanding of the diets and the importance of adherence, but following through with the guidelines and making renal friendly foods at home can be challenging. If we are able to offer renal-friendly meals or snacks, that really does help the patients overall,” Burke said.
When asked about what was most exciting about this data, Burke said, “Overall adherence with the renal-friendly diet as evidenced by the percentage of patients that showed improvement in the report card program. Managing phosphorus in dialysis patients is very challenging so the more we can offer renal friendly meals, the more improvement we should see with their levels.”
Burke said this program will be the basis for such an expansion.
“The Grub Club Program was available as we were given an outside grant. After the program was complete and while putting together the data for the poster, we realized this population would greatly benefit from some sort of meal program. We are currently piloting a program to address food insecurity in our dialysis patients,” she said. “The meals we are giving families are renal friendly, and we are hoping we will continue to see improvement in their labs with this intervention. ... We continue to do education on the renal-friendly diet at the bedside and if we were given grant money, could re-create the off-unit grub clubs.”
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Burke C, et al. Poster 452. Presented at: NKF Spring Clinical Meetings; May 14-18, 2024; Long Beach, Calif.
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