It seems pretty obvious that one way to reduce healthcare costs in a community is to get area hospitals and doctors to lower their prices for drugs and services. Actually, a better way would be to reduce food insecurity. Food insecurity accounted for nearly $53 billion of extra healthcare expenditures…
Posts published in “Food is Medicine”
Like other food banks, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is striving to distribute more produce by making it at least 50% of the total amount of food it delivers. It’s getting closer to this goal, thanks in part to a novel way of pushing produce out to its pantries. Its…
When Houston Food Bank set out to address root causes of hunger, ranging from poor health to unemployment, it knew it needed to partner with hospitals, schools and clinics. It didn’t realize that getting these community organizations on board would require it to develop a nutrition policy. Now two years…
Challenged by local funders to identify complex social problems and innovative ways to address them, Patti Habeck, President of Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, found an answer in lettuce. Along with Fork Farms of Appleton, Wis., the food bank is deploying small-scale, hydroponic farming systems at food pantries, schools and other…
As a graduate student at Yale University, Emma Stein marveled at the sheer convenience of meal preparation kits like Blue Apron and Plated. When it came time for her to develop her master’s thesis in public health, it wasn’t a stretch for her to wonder how such kits might be…
It’s the rare celebrity chef who is also a policy wonk, but that at least partly describes Michel Nischan, a three-time James Beard Award winning chef who’s as conversant as anyone in Congress on the nuances of the farm bill. Nischan is also a food activist and innovator who figured…
The charitable food system — with its close connection to vulnerable populations — seems like the perfect environment to pursue strategies aimed at controlling diabetes. But finding those solutions is proving as complex as the disease itself. Feeding America helped shed light on possible solutions when it completed a rigorous…
When Anna Trautwein looks back on a program aimed at improving the health of diabetic food-pantry clients in Essex County, N.J., she sees some stand-out success stories: the handful of people who lost a significant amount of weight; the few who were able to wean themselves off some prescription drugs;…
There is a new category of food distribution in the works, and the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank is helping to define it. Rooted in the concept of food as medicine, SFMFB is working with the San Francisco Department of Public Health to develop a network of “food pharmacies,” which look…