Medically tailored meals will be delivered to thousands more food-insecure and chronically and critically ill people nationwide through the Food is Medicine Accelerator, a project providing technical assistance and training to nonprofit food agencies so that they can launch the life-saving health intervention in underserved communities.
The home-delivered meals are designed by a registered dietitian and reflect an evidence-based dietary therapy for illnesses such as cancer, cardiac disease, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. The intervention also includes standards for nutrition and food quality, nutrition counseling and education, data collection, and health care referrals.
Four nonprofit agencies – Feeding Tampa Bay in Florida, the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Meals on Wheels People of Portland, Oregon, and the New Hampshire Food Bank – recently completed a yearlong, intensive training program through the Accelerator. The project has expanded the number of medically tailored meals providers to 16 operating in 14 states. A second cohort of five nonprofit agencies – located in Central Florida, Northwest Indiana, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin – has begun the training to further expand MTM access.
The Food is Medicine Accelerator is a partnership between the Food is Medicine Coalition, Community Servings, God's Love We Deliver, Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School, and Nonprofit Finance Fund. Supported by funding from CVS Health, private donors, and co-investments from the agencies participating in the training, the Food is Medicine Accelerator works to refine, replicate and broadly scale the MTM model to support individuals in areas across the country that do not have access to MTM services.
"As leading advocates in the Food is Medicine movement, we feel compelled to address the urgent need for medically tailored meals not only in Massachusetts, where we feed thousands of people annually, but also in other parts of the country," said David B. Waters, CEO of Community Servings, in a statement. "The Food is Medicine Accelerator will help improve the health of people across our nation by expanding this model to areas where homebound, critically ill individuals currently have no access."
Related: Local Market Coming to Indianapolis Food Desert; Feeding America Introduces Online Grocery Ordering.