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…
Posts published in “Food is Medicine”
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…
It’s fair to say that every food bank in the country would like to prioritize health and nutrition in its policies and procedures. Today, Partnership for a Healthier America is releasing the results of an index it developed to help food banks do just that. More than two years in…
In theory, healthcare and hunger-relief entities are excellent partners in serving food-insecure people in their communities. In reality, there are often barriers to making those partnerships click. The Federation of Virginia Food Banks and the state’s seven member food banks are working to break down those barriers with a three-year…
As more people recognize that food is integral to health, more hospital-based food pantries are turning up. In Chicago, one hospital has pioneered an “open-access” pantry model that it contends can be more beneficial to public health than other approaches. The Feed1st pantry at the University of Chicago Medical Center…
Most food banks do a good job of tracking and talking about how many pounds of food they deliver. But they still have a ways to go in terms of knowing and sharing how much of that food is nutritious. Partnership for a Healthier America wants to change that by…
Early insights from Massachusetts show promising pathways for using Medicaid dollars to treat food and nutrition insecurity, but underscore that technology will be a big challenge. Hunger relief entities in Massachusetts got extra incentive to continue exploring ways to work with the healthcare community in September, when the state’s MassHealth…