The Food-Is-Medicine movement is growing; farmers need to be at the table to ensure these programs source food locally and regeneratively
The food-is-medicine movement — some prefer the name “food-as-health” — is moving at lightning speed. Seven states (Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, and Washington) have passed a Medicaid 1115 waiver that covers additional food and nutrition benefits. Four additional states are in the approval process for this waiver (Delaware, Illinois, New Mexico, and New York), and Missouri is close to launching a similar 1915(c) waiver. North Carolina’s Health and Human Services Department alone invested $650 million in a Healthy Opportunity Pilot, which includes produce prescription, housing and transportation.
Millions of healthcare, Farm Bill and other grant dollars are being spent to help supply those in need with healthier food. This is a good thing. Yet where is the investment in the farmers who take on all the risk to grow this healthy food? Is the medicalizing of food as a health insurance benefit a potential problem, or the holy grail? Programs throughout the nation are billing Medicaid Managed Care and Medicare Advantage programs for food, but is that money staying in the local economy and supporting local farmers?
A few programs in the nation are looking at food as medicine through a full-system lens, using their dollars both to improve health outcomes and to support regenerative farms. Recipe4Health in California grows regenerative fruits and vegetables for their produce prescription program. A $6.6 million National Institutes of Health project in the Mississippi Delta called Delta GREENS is sourcing from local farmers for its 300 program participants. FreshRx Oklahoma (featured in the April 2023 issue of this magazine) sources and aggregates from 25 local small-scale farmers with good soil health practices.
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