APATT_CommunityActionGuide

Take Your Place Community Action Guide
21
Snapshot from the Field:
Communities Making a Difference
Just What the Doctor Ordered: Food Pantry Prescriptions
For a lot of medical departments, the connection between healthy bodies and healthy food
is an obvious one, and treating diet-related disease has everything to do with access to
healthier food. Public health departments that work with low-income patients also recognize
how difficult it is for their populations to access the kinds of food that can both prevent and
treat diseases.
Innovative programs like the Preventive Food Pantry at Boston Medical Center work to
address the problems of nutrition-related illness and minimally nutritious diets for low-income
patients by creating a pathway of communication between doctors and nutritionists. In this
model, primary care providers write “prescriptions” for supplemental foods that best promote
physical health, prevent future illness and facilitate recovery. Families that receive prescriptions
are able to visit the pantry twice a month and take up to three days’ worth of food to feed
their families. The Pantry provides mostly perishable foods, like meats and seasonal fruits and
vegetables. It serves an average of 7,000 patients per month. For more information, visit
www.bmc.org/nutritionresourcecenter/foodpantry.htm
Build Bridges Between Health Care Providers and Food Providers
TAKE
ACTIOn
The incredible work of the Boston Medical Center’s Preventive Food Pantry was the
result of a handful of brave individuals who spent time defining the problem and making
strategic partnerships to address it. Does your local emergency room or public health
department partner with your local food bank, farmers market or community garden? If
not, think about bringing these groups together around a screening of the documentary
to explore building bridges across sectors. These new relationships can bolster mutually
shared efforts to bring about a healthier, more equitable community for all.