Improving Health Outcomes Through Investigations of Wabanaki Food Systems in Maine

May 21, 2026 updated by: Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness
Wabanaki ancestral lands historically provided abundant resources, allowing Wabanaki people to rely exclusively on hunting, fishing, and gathering for all their subsistence needs. However, as their sacred hunting and fishing grounds were lost to colonization, the Wabanaki people lost access to their traditional foods, which has had devastating impacts on the communities' health and well-being. Without access to traditional foods like fiddleheads, corn, beans, squash, wild rice, fish, and many others, the Wabanaki people experienced a surge in many nutrition-related health problems, such as diabetes, obesity, and heart-disease, which have only increased exponentially with time. This Community Research Project (CRP) seeks to improve these health outcomes for Wabanaki people by upscaling the Wabanaki Mobile Food Pantry (WMFP), an existing program that delivers fresh and traditional foods to the Tribal communities. The CRP is grounded in the understanding that food sovereignty is fundamental to achieving and sustaining the health and well-being of Wabanaki communities. The upscaled WMFP aims to increase community access to fresh, traditional, or locally sourced foods, improve community perceptions of food pantries, support cultural connection, promote sustainable, culturally relevant food systems, and increase Tribal members' knowledge and self-efficacy surrounding the cultivation, preparation, and preservation of traditional foods.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

500

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Locations

    • Maine
      • Bangor, Maine, United States, 04401
        • Recruiting
        • Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness
        • Contact:
        • Principal Investigator:
          • Leigh Neptune, PhD, RDN

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Adults age 18 years and older
  • Members of a Wabanaki community

Exclusion Criteria:

-None

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Prevention
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Mobile Food Pantry Community Intervention Group
Community participants exposed to the upscaled Mobile Food Pantry Intervention
Community-led expansion of a Mobile Food Pantry program designed to improve access to nutritious and culturally appropriate foods and address food insecurity among Wabanaki communities. Outcomes are evaluated using a pre-post study design.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Food Security Status (Hunger Vital Sign / 6-Item HFSSM Score)
Time Frame: Baseline (Wabanaki Community Survey pilot period, approximately 3-6 months)
Food security will be measured using the validated 6-Item USDA Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) included in the Wabanaki Community Survey. The outcome will report food security status categorized according to standard scoring criteria (e.g., high, marginal, low, very low food security) Unit of Measure: Food security category (per HFSSM scoring) This outcome will be used in subsequent analyses examining its correlation with Mobile Food Pantry utilization.
Baseline (Wabanaki Community Survey pilot period, approximately 3-6 months)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Health-Related Quality of Life (CDC HRQoL Indicators)
Time Frame: Baseline (during Wabanaki Community Survey data collection period)

Health-related quality of life will be measured using the CDC HRQoL-4 indicators included in the Wabanaki Community Survey. Measures include:

  • Number of physically unhealthy days (past 30 days)
  • Number of mentally unhealthy days (past 30 days)
  • Self-rated general health (5-point scale)

Each indicator will be reported separately.

  • Unit of Measure:
  • Days (physically unhealthy days, mentally unhealthy days)
  • Units on a 5-point scale (self-rated health)

These measures will be used in analyses assessing their correlation with Mobile Food Pantry utilization.

Baseline (during Wabanaki Community Survey data collection period)

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Collaborators

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

May 11, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

August 1, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

September 1, 2027

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 10, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 30, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

May 1, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 26, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 21, 2026

Last Verified

May 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Other Study ID Numbers

  • OT2OD035832 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

IPD Plan Description

Individual participant data will not be publicly shared due to Tribal data sovereignty considerations (including Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP) Principals) and community data governance agreements. Data are owned and governed by Wabanaki Tribal partners and Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness. Any data sharing will follow Tribal approval processes and established data use agreements.

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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