11/15/24 –
Over one in five New Haven residents deal with food insecurity. In response, the student-run HAVEN Free Clinic started the Food Pharmacy, which aims to help combat the issue by “prescribing” nutrition education and providing healthy groceries to patients at the clinic.
In conjunction with the medical care patients receive at HAVEN Free Clinic, patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure will be prescribed healthy meals tailored to their conditions. They then choose groceries provided by the Food Pharmacy to prepare those healthy meals.
The program hopes to illustrate the importance of the social determinants of health, such as lack of access to healthy food.
