Followers of the Food is Medicine movement will know that a growing number of private food box companies are working with insurers to provide their clients with healthy food as a covered benefit (Food Bank News wrote about that here). Steve Brazeel, Founder and CEO of SunTerra Produce, is showing…
Posts published in “Food is Medicine”
Feeding America shared center stage with Instacart and Rockefeller Foundation today as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced partnerships with all three entities to advance the use of nutritious food to improve public health at its first-ever Food is Medicine Summit. The three organizations are not working…
Food banks and pantries know they are really good at getting healthy food to vulnerable people. Increasingly, the healthcare industry is understanding that as well. Both healthcare payers and providers are seeking ways to more fully partner with experts in hunger relief. They realize food banks and pantries not only…
A recently published paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association gives the cold shoulder to the concept of Food is Medicine. The authors, affiliated with Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania, describe all the attention being paid to Food is Medicine – including by the White…
There are plenty of opportunities to go around in Food as Medicine, and celebrity chef Michel Nischan aptly summed them up last week at the Food as Medicine Policy Summit held in Washington D.C. Patients get food to improve their lives; doctors get tools to slow devastating disease; insurance plans…
Of the ten recommendations that the Bipartisan Policy Center recently issued for advancing Food is Medicine, only one addresses the role of community based organizations (CBOs) that provide food and nutrition (i.e., food banks and pantries). The Food is Medicine movement is gaining prominence as a way to address spiraling…
In a recent video, the head of a healthcare foundation articulated why partnerships between healthcare providers and hunger relief organizations can be so challenging, despite the growing mounds of evidence that a food-secure population leads to improved public health. John Lumpkin, M.D., M.P.H., president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield…
Like many nonprofits, Reinvestment Partners of Durham, N.C., relied on grant funding when it started Eat Well, a produce prescription program that began by getting money into the hands of veterans so they could purchase fresh produce. Before long, the produce prescription program was supported through a multi-million dollar contract…
A new survey from Food Research and Action Center points to the need for much greater communication between healthcare centers and hunger relief organizations when it comes to food insecurity screening and intervening. Only 25% of healthcare providers refer their food-insecure patients to a food bank or pantry for food…