So what made you want to study culturally and medically tailored meals as an intervention to promote cardiovascular health?

Yeah.

So the inspiration and groundwork for the program and the study really began several years ago.

So as part of an Indian Health Service QI initiative, we did a lot of community outreach in Navajo Nation.

We had listening sessions, focus groups, and our goal was really to understand the biggest barriers for community members to achieve optimal health and to really ask community members, "What do you need to be healthy?" And what we overwhelmingly found was that access to healthy food or nutrition insecurity was really reported as a major barrier to health.

And then what we heard over and over again was the strong desire to return to and reclaim traditional indigenous foods to advance health.

And I even remember one community member noting that traditional foods are our strength.

I wonder if you have a story or an example about how what you did was influenced or different than what you might have expected based on the community input and participation.

So what made you want to study culturally and medically tailored meals as an intervention to promote cardiovascular health?

Yeah.

So the inspiration and groundwork for the program and the study really began several years ago.

So as part of an Indian Health Service QI initiative, we did a lot of community outreach in Navajo Nation.

We had listening sessions, focus groups, and our goal was really to understand the biggest barriers for community members to achieve optimal health and to really ask community members, "What do you need to be healthy?" And what we overwhelmingly found was that access to healthy food or nutrition insecurity was really reported as a major barrier to health.

And then what we heard over and over again was the strong desire to return to and reclaim traditional indigenous foods to advance health.

And I even remember one community member noting that traditional foods are our strength.

I wonder if you have a story or an example about how what you did was influenced or different than what you might have expected based on the community input and participation.