8/14/2024 –
When people think of Food is Medicine, they typically think of medically tailored meals and/or produce prescriptions. Those types of targeted solutions address patients with the most acute need for nutritious food.
But there’s a much bigger role that Food is Medicine should be playing, according to a report released last month by the Food Research and Action Center. Health care systems should be focusing the bulk of their Food is Medicine attention on getting people signed up for SNAP, the nation’s largest nutrition assistance program.
SNAP of course is deeply familiar to organizations working in the hunger relief space. Food banks play a big role in helping people get signed up for SNAP, a program that last fiscal year spent $112.8 billion to help an average of 42.1 million people a month purchase food.
Even though SNAP has many documented benefits, including an ability to improve health and well-being, it doesn’t spring to mind as a Food is Medicine intervention.
“There’s a real need to highlight the role of the federal nutrition programs in this space. We don’t want Food as Medicine to be synonymous with, ‘Oh, that means people are getting a medically tailored meal,’” said Alexandra Ashbrook, Director of WIC and Root Causes at FRAC…
