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…
Posts published in “Food is Medicine”
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…
In 2020, when Healthy Eating Research introduced nutrition guidelines designed to be easy for food banks to adopt and use, it hoped that Feeding America members would move toward the new framework over the next five years. That wish appears to be coming true. So far, 101 food banks across…
Three years ago, Ashley Tyrner (pictured above) persuaded a single health plan provider to allow her company, FarmboxRx, to provide the plan’s members with boxes of produce as a way to proactively improve their overall health. Today, FarmboxRx is a $35 million company partnering with 87 health plans to deliver…
There’s no doubt that the new ability in some states to tap Medicaid money as reimbursement for nutrition services is attracting attention from the hunger-relief community. But there’s another legislative mandate that is having a more immediate impact on food-bank partnerships with healthcare organizations. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid…
When it comes to nutritional quality, a recent study has given the green light to the majority of foods in three USDA food programs at the heart of the charitable food system. The study assessed food items offered by the TEFAP commodity food program for food banks, the FDPIR program…