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Jack Baldwin’s commitment to food systems research stems from the six years he served in AmeriCorps, he said. Before graduating from Syracuse University in 2020 with a Master of Public Administration, he worked as an urban farmer and gardener in Trenton, New Jersey.

Now, Baldwin works with the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs’ X Lab as a senior associate, studying the effects of medically tailored groceries on veterans’ health through a research collaboration with the Syracuse VA Medical Center and Instacart.

“We want to show that veterans having access to healthy foods, the primary focus of the medically tailored groceries, leads to specific, measurable health outcomes,” Baldwin said. “The goal is to derive a causal link between a program like this and our measured outcomes, which will inform policy and provide causal evidence.”

Using a rigorous randomized control trial to gather evidence, the Maxwell X Lab’s study is a part of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ “Food is Medicine” effort.

The study involves 600 veterans, who receive VA resources like healthy cooking classes, one-on-one meetings with a dietician and online food guides for healthier cooking. Two hundred fifty of the veterans in the study will also be provided with a year of food vouchers worth $100 monthly on Instacart to supplement their current groceries with healthier options.

The food vouchers will allow participants to shop for medically-tailored groceries selected by dietitians that address common issues they face like hypertension, obesity and diabetes, said Colleen Heflin, a public administration and international affairs professor.

The initiative provides veterans with the resources and education necessary to adopt healthier eating habits and create lasting health improvements, while measuring the benefits of the medically tailored groceries.

The Maxwell X Lab partners with public and nonprofit sectors to complete research, according to its website.

In Trenton, Baldwin worked with local communities to plant city gardens and create urban green spaces to help food-insecure communities access locally sourced foods.

Following Baldwin’s time with AmeriCorps, he started at Teach for America as a biology teacher at a Title I school, a school where over 40% of students qualify for either free or reduced lunch.
There, he saw firsthand how hunger directly undermines childhood education.

“When kids don’t have enough food to just be a kid, it has a massive effect on education and behavior … with direct links to graduation rates,” Baldwin said. “I was a teacher who always packed extra food to give to kids when they couldn’t learn.”

Baldwin returned to Maxwell in January 2023 to join the Maxwell X Lab. He emphasized the importance of the lab’s work, particularly in its use of randomized control trials.

“When a program is offered, it’s difficult to attribute the outcome solely to the program,” Baldwin said. “The RCT addresses this by taking a sample of a population and randomly assigning them to either a treatment group or a control group. This provides a robust research design to compare the treatment and control groups and look for significant results in health outcomes.”

Heflin has spent her career analyzing social problems, specifically food insecurity. Now through her work with the Maxwell X Lab, she said she’s moved “beyond the research,” leading a project that offers direct solutions while also generating rigorous data that can influence food security policy.

Heflin’s involvement stems from her previous work with the military and veterans. After previously testifying before Congress about military and veteran food insecurity, she said she made “key connections” in the VA.

“It was the folks at the VA who actually reached out to me and asked if I wanted to be involved in evaluating a project like this,” Heflin said.

Maxwell research assistant Ashraf Haque said his involvement in the Maxwell X Lab is driven by a central goal – bridging the gap between academia and policymaking.

Haque joined the Maxwell Ph.D. program in 2023. He’s spent the past eight years working, conducting research and assisting policymakers, including serving as the country director for Innovations for Poverty Action Bangladesh.

During his time there, Haque managed, implemented and communicated the results of at least 60 RCTs. He said his primary job was reworking research rhetoric into plain language for local policymakers. He also helped design programs that would efficiently utilize the scarce resources available in his local community.

Addressing the health issues of veterans through this VA study is vastly different work compared to his earlier projects in Bangladesh, Haque said. However, he believes the fundamental challenges remain the same. He explained the biggest challenge across all nations is building trust.

“When you offer something to a group of people, how they respond is almost universal across all countries,” Haque said. “’Why are they offering this to me? What are their intentions?”

Haque said his experiences bridging that gap in Bangladesh developed a skill that is transferable to any study and any group of people across the world.

Haque also emphasized the importance of the data gathered during this study. The VA provides veterans with resources and subsidies for daily life. But for Haque, the X lab’s “cold numbers” will help strategists find out whether providing healthy groceries is the best way to help veterans.

For all three researchers, while the ability to impact a vulnerable population is incredibly meaningful, their primary goal is still focused on the data they gather, Heflin said.

“You need to understand which $100 gives you the best final outcome … If you have those cold numbers, you can compare,” Haque said. “Am I helping veterans in the best possible way with this $100? Or is there any other program that can help them more compared to this program?”

Published on October 1, 2025 at 10:55 pm