Mid-Ohio Foodbank Prescribes Food as Medicine through Health Center Partnership
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Sen. Charleta Tavares (D-Columbus)

The Mid-Ohio Foodbank offered the results of its “Produce Connect” partnership with community health center PrimaryOne Health Friday, saying that about 10,000 individuals have participated in the program within the 20 counties served by the foodbank, with individuals who made multiple visits experiencing significant improvements in health outcomes.

Matt Habash, CEO and president of Mid-Ohio Foodbank, explained on a conference call with reporters that about 10 to 14 billion pounds of produce is harvested and not sold every year in the United States, but foodbanks, including Mid-Ohio, have secured about 1.5 billion pounds of the produce to distribute as a part of their programs.

“The reality is we have a lot more food than we’re able to move,” Habash said.

Also on the call was Sen. Charleta Tavares (D-Columbus), speaking from her position as president and CEO of PrimaryOne Health, who said that about 40 percent of the patients served by her organization are already food insecure, so they cannot afford “very expensive” fresh fruits and vegetables without help, which is why the Produce Connect prescription program is important.

The program is open to individuals with incomes below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Line ($24,100 annual income for a single person; $40,800 annual income for a family of three) who receive health care services from the two participating community health centers: PrimaryOne Health and Physician’s Care Connection. Qualifying individuals will receive a “Produce Rx” card that allows them to visit participating food pantry partners to pick up fresh fruits and vegetables for free once per week.

Only about 40 percent of individuals who received a Produce Rx card took advantage of their prescription between August, 2016 and August, 2018, which Habash said could be related to the stigma of visiting food pantries, but also could be related to a knowledge gap regarding food preparation techniques. However, among the patients who took advantage of their Produce Rx card more than 12 times in a year, those individuals paid an average of 27.9 visits to participating food pantries annually and experienced the best health outcomes.

David Brewer, nutrition program manager at PrimaryOne Health, said that overweight patients who utilized the program 12 times or more in a year lost an average of 11 pounds, while patients with diabetes who used the program experienced an average 0.8 percent decrease in their A1C levels, which translates to an annual savings of approximately $6,500 per patient to health care systems. He said that a 1.0 percent decrease in a patient’s A1C levels typically yields an annual $8,000 savings to health care systems.

Habash and Tavares repeatedly referred to healthy food and nutrition programs as a “low-cost, high-value health care strategy” that is gaining increasing acceptance in medical circles as an effective health care treatment.

“Even from when we first started this program, there’s been more attempts to bring nutrition into the mainstream of health care,” Habash said. “It’s an indictment of the American health care system – it’s a sick-care model transitioning to a health care model.”

Habash indicated that some of the greatest hurdles the program has yet to face are eliminating the stigma of visiting food pantries – even when individuals are struggling financially – and improving awareness of the program. He described anecdotal successes of converting abandoned car washes into drive-through produce markets in low-income neighborhoods that participated in the program, but he said more of that needs to happen for the program to succeed.

However, among the individuals already using the program, Tavares said it has been a great boon to them.

“They get to select the food, so it’s not like we’re giving something we think they should have,” she said. “Because there’s various racial and ethnic populations served by PrimaryOne, there’s different preferences among those different cultures, so they get to pick food they know and are familiar with.”

Story originally published in The Hannah Report on November 16, 2018.  Copyright 2018 Hannah News Service, Inc.