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 together with HHS on a single Food is Medicine initiative as much as in parallel to strengthen efforts that are already underway. While not much was revealed about the scope of HHS’s support, Secretary Xavier Becerra noted, “There is money behind this … this is real.”
Vince Hall, Government Relations Manager at Feeding America, noted onstage that 80% of the 200 food banks in the Feeding America network are already involved in Food is Medicine efforts, and that the partnership with HHS offers “an incredible opportunity to catalyst those initiatives to even broader scale and impact.”
In a press release, Feeding America said the HHS partnership will strengthen its ongoing work with Elevance Health Foundation, which in September 2022 invested $14.1 million (its largest investment ever) to help more than 20 Feeding America food banks with enhanced data collection capabilities related to their work with healthcare partners. (Food Bank News wrote about Feeding America’s relationship with Elevance here.)
Hall noted that 153,000 people were screened for food insecurity within the Elevance health system within the last nine months; 30,000 of them were referred to local food banks, and 25,000 joined a local Food is Medicine program. Examples of such programs include food distribution centers in hospitals; regular check-ins to make sure patients are accessing local food resources after leaving the hospital, and Type II diabetes education programs.
Instacart’s Dani Dudeck, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, said her company’s HHS partnership will help build out its Instacart Health program, which it launched at the end of 2022 as a way to scale its products and platforms to provide more nutritious food in the home. Dudeck noted that Instacart can deliver fresh food to 85% of all U.S. households, and get to 93% of all U.S. food desert residents within two hours.
Rockefeller Foundation announced that it would invest an additional $80 million over the next five years to advance Food is Medicine programs in the U.S., bringing its total commitment to the cause to $100 million since 2019. Elizabeth Yee, Rockefeller’s Executive Vice President of Program Strategy, said, “We’re excited to partner with Feeding America and Instacart to actually take those dollars and not just commit to money, but to take action and really help improve lives.” – Chris Costanzo
CAPTION FOR PHOTO, TOP: Vince Hall of Feeding America (with microphone) spoke at the Dept. of HHS’s first-ever Food is Medicine Summit, alongside (from left to right) Xavier Becerra of HSS, Elizabeth Yee of Rockefeller Center and Dani Dudeck of Instacart.
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