Abbott and NACHC Launch Multi-Year Initiative to Embed Nutrition Into Primary Care at Community Health Centers

Abbott and the National Association of Community Health Centers have launched a multi-year initiative to build nutrition into primary care delivery at community health centers, the network of clinics that together serve 52.3 million people across the United States, including roughly 1 in 7 Americans and 1 in 3 rural residents.¹

Called the NACHC and Abbott Food for Health Initiative, the program centers on a national certification track along with training and peer-learning resources intended to help health centers move nutrition support from an ancillary service into a standard part of chronic disease care.

"Since the first health center opened, Community Health Centers, the nation's largest network of primary care providers, have led the way in addressing food insecurity and integrating nutrition into care delivery," said Kyu Rhee, MD, MPP, president and CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers. "Our collaboration with Abbott builds on that legacy by strengthening Community Health Centers' capacity to prevent and manage nutrition-related conditions through evidence-based, practical solutions that are designed to improve health outcomes."

For manufacturers in the nutraceutical and medical nutrition space, the initiative signals a continued institutional push toward what's often called food as medicine, a framing that has implications for how nutrition products get positioned, reimbursed, and distributed through clinical channels rather than solely retail ones.

What Does the Initiative Actually Involve?

The program has 3 components:

1. A Learning Lab is designed to build nutrition literacy across the Community Health Center workforce and guide staff in implementing and measuring food-based interventions.
2. A Community of Practice functions as a national peer network for health centers to share tactics and troubleshoot common barriers.
3. A certification track, called Food for Health CORE, is voluntary and intended to recognize centers that have built the systems and staff competencies needed to sustain nutrition-integrated care over time.

The initiative builds on a partnership between Abbott and the health center association dating to 2023, and follows a 2025 assessment of health centers across 37 states that identified fragmented funding, training gaps, and inconsistent data collection as the primary barriers preventing wider adoption of food-based care models.

Why Does Nutrition Matter as Much as It Does to Chronic Disease?

Nutrition-related chronic conditions, including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, remain among the leading drivers of morbidity and healthcare spending in the US, and dietary quality is consistently identified in the clinical literature as a modifiable factor in both disease onset and progression.²

Despite that evidence base, food-based interventions have historically sat outside the standard primary care workflow, more often delivered through separate social service referrals than integrated directly into a patient's ongoing clinical management. That structural gap, rather than a lack of underlying evidence, is largely what this initiative is designed to address.

What Remains Unanswered at Launch?

Because Food for Health CORE certification is voluntary, participation rates across the more than 1,500 eligible health centers are not yet known, and it's unclear how the initiative will independently evaluate outcomes as centers adopt the framework. Neither organization has specified metrics, timelines, or a public reporting structure for assessing the initiative's clinical or cost impact going forward.

References

1. Abbott and NACHC launch nationwide Food for Health initiative to make nutritious food a core part of healthcare. Abbott. August 17, 2026. Accessed August 18, 2026. https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2026-08-17-Abbott-and-NACHC-launch-nationwide-Food-for-Health-initiative-to-make-nutritious-food-a-core-part-of-healthcare

2. Gropper SS. The role of nutrition in chronic disease. Nutrients. 2023;15(3):664. doi:10.3390/nu15030664