The Town of Needham Board of Health voted to begin a three-month pilot to deliver two cold meals to participants in the Traveling Meals program, aiming to ease production burdens at the hospital partner and test client acceptance.

Staff member Tara (identified in the meeting packet as the Traveling Meals coordinator) told the board she surveyed clients in September and received a 53.2 percent response rate. She said 94 percent of respondents reported being completely or somewhat satisfied with both hot and cold meals, 65 percent either eat the cold meal first or have no preference, and 96 percent said they already heat or reheat some component of their meals. Based on those results, staff recommended a three-month test replacing one hot and one cold meal with two cold meals, followed by a client survey at the end of the trial to guide a permanent decision.

Board members asked whether the cold meals were designed to be reheated and about packaging. Tara said meals are delivered in aluminum-foil trays with reheating instructions; the hospital partner offered to switch to microwaveable plastic trays but cited a roughly 34 percent price increase, so staff proposed keeping foil for the pilot and asking the follow-up survey about reheating difficulty. Members also questioned nutritional content; staff said hospital cooks would aim to replicate the hot-meal protein/vegetable/starch composition by preparing meals the night before and cooling them for morning pickup to reduce staff workload.

After discussion, a board member moved to approve the pilot and it was seconded. The board voted in favor and the pilot was approved. Staff will run the three-month test, send a follow-up survey in month three and return findings to the board for a decision about longer-term changes.

The vote followed standard procedure; the motion referenced the pilot described in the meeting packet. No additional conditions were added at the time of the vote. The board did not provide a precise roll-call tally in the record beyond vocal affirmations during the meeting.

Staff noted the program delivered 768 meals in November to 51 clients, and 40 of those clients were served through SpringWell; three clients canceled and one new client joined. The board asked staff to continue working with the hospital partner to minimize operational disruption and to include reheating and container questions in the month‑three survey.