Boston, MA, Sept. 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In collaboration with the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, Mass General Brigham is committing $8.4 million to advertise diet fairness and safety, assist meals as drugs applications to deal with diet-related ailments, and fund food-related programming at native community-based organizations throughout Massachusetts. This dedication was highlighted at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health by the Biden-Harris Administration.
The 2022 Conference is the first of its form in additional than 50 years. The White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health held in 1969 led to transformational applications like WIC which have helped tens of millions of Americans stay more healthy lives. According to the Greater Boston Food Bank, 1.8 million folks in Massachusetts skilled meals insecurity, or 32% of the inhabitants. Massachusetts noticed a 59% enhance in meals insecurity in 2020 and 2021, the highest enhance in the nation.
“We know that access to healthy, nutritious food can have a monumental impact on patients’ health outcomes and it is disproportionately impacting underserved communities in every city and state,” mentioned Anne Klibanski, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mass General Brigham. “Mass General Brigham’s community health teams are on the front lines working with community partners to combat food insecurity every day. We are eager to join this national movement to end hunger and the long-term health consequences that comes with it.”
Within its personal healthcare system, Mass General Brigham is increasing meals entry to sufferers by way of the MGH Revere HealthCare Center. Funding will assist the growth of a everlasting meals pantry with bigger storage capability and a instructing kitchen to assist showcase the energy of implementing “Food is Medicine” programming in the neighborhood.
“Mass General Brigham’s commitment is bold and ambitious, building the capacity of community organizations that have the best understanding of the needs of their residents and targeting the root causes of inequities through a focus on prevention and addressing the social determinants of health,” mentioned Elsie M. Taveras, MD, MPH, Chief Community Health and Health Equity Officer, Mass General Brigham, who will take part in the 2022 White House convention. “We are committed to eliminating chronic disease disparities among our patients and in the communities we serve, and we believe these nutrition equity-focused initiatives combined with our broader health equity strategy will translate into measurable health impact.”
In addition to the MGH Revere Food Pantry, Mass General Brigham can be committing $6.35 million to scale efficient applications and methods at seven community-based organizations. These applications goal to cut back meals insecurity, promote diet fairness, and administer “Food is Medicine” applications and medically tailor-made meals in Massachusetts. They embrace:
- About Fresh: Funding will enhance the capability of the “Fresh Connect” program, enabling the scale and influence throughout Boston communities, statewide, and nationally. Fresh Connect is a tech-enabled meals prescription program that empowers folks with the cash and suppleness to purchase the meals they must be wholesome. Funding will even enhance organizing and advocacy for the “Fresh Truck” which brings recent produce to marginalized communities, and it’ll assist in the evaluation of About Fresh applications.
- Community Servings: Funding will enable Community Servings to offer medically tailor-made meals (10 meals per week for as much as six months) for roughly 264 people with cardiometabolic illness. The focus will likely be on communities impacted by racial inequities. Mass General Brigham will collaborate with Community Servings to determine and refer sufferers and neighborhood members.
- La Colaborativa: Funding will assist the growth of a brand new community-based industrial kitchen in Chelsea, Mass., that will likely be used to arrange and serve wholesome neighborhood meals, host wholesome meal prep demonstrations and diet programs, and empower native cooks to construct job readiness abilities and generate revenue.
- GreenRoots: The funding will fund the creation of a Teaching Kitchen adjoining to Chelsea’s Urban Farm and Community Garden. This will likely be a central location for residents to collect, construct neighborhood, discover ways to develop their very own produce, and cook dinner recent, wholesome meals highlighting their produce. There will likely be a concentrate on medically tailor-made courses aimed to forestall and handle continual ailments. They will supply neighborhood courses instructing culinary abilities to native organizations, meals pantries and restaurant employees, enabling workforce growth alternatives to broaden native entrepreneurship whereas selling more healthy cooking choices.
- The Food Bank of Western MA: The monetary assist to the Food Bank will assist construct capability to arrange and ship medically tailor-made meals and different providers to members of the communities it serves, together with diet training and referrals to social service organizations for wrap-around providers, which can assist and enhance the well being and well-being of its surrounding communities.
- Salem Food Pantry: North Shore Physicians Group (NSPG) is partnering with the Salem Pantry to offer the local people entry to free, weekly cellular pop-up markets. The quantity of households receiving recent, free produce from the weekly markets has risen considerably since the begin of the program in 2020. The grant will enable for the growth of the weekly markets to fulfill the elevated demand and permit the markets to proceed by way of the winter months.
- Phoenix Food Hub: The Phoenix Food Hub is a collaborative venture spearheaded by Greater Lynn Senior Services (GLSS) as part of the Lynn Food Security Task Force and involving many organizations throughout the metropolis supposed to carry collectively as many nutrition-related helps as doable. The funding will likely be used to construct a 4,800-square-foot house in Lynn, Mass. that may supply a state-of-the-art instructing kitchen and meals pantry, meals distribution, meal supply, farmers’ markets, diet screening and counseling, wholesome cooking courses, and a spread of different assist providers.
Each group has agreed to take part in analysis and reporting actions to share outcomes, which will likely be used to measure progress towards Mass General Brigham’s targets of enhancing diet for these with, or in danger of, cardiometabolic illness and substance use dysfunction.
“Our partnership with Mass General Brigham has helped us expand our ability to help the community of Chelsea and beyond. We are committed to helping people who are facing hunger and food insecurity by helping people get a meal to eat right away or a bag of groceries with fresh produce to cook later. We are especially excited to open our Survival Center and kitchen space where we also hope to teach community members about preparing healthy, meals,” says Gladys Vega, Executive Director of La Colaborativa, one of the neighborhood companions. She notes that this work is particularly essential as a result of of the excessive charges of diabetes and hypertension in native communities. La Colaborativa is proud to offer an answer.
“Our partnership is an excellent example of how large healthcare organizations who are invested in food access and nutrition can support agencies who have already established a programmatic presence in underserved communities. It goes beyond a funding contribution—Mass General Brigham has created a community of like-minded organizations. It is so helpful to be able to regularly meet with other non-profits doing similar work to review our progress, share best practices, and celebrate our successes together,” says Vega.
Mass General Brigham can be committing to broaden screening for meals insecurity and maximize SNAP and WIC enrollment amongst its affected person populations. Expanding diet equity-focused initiatives guided by a complete well being fairness technique will translate into measurable well being influence, such as closing continual illness disparities.
These commitments are part of Mass General Brigham’s United Against Racism initiative, a multi-year, systemwide endeavor to handle the influence of racism on sufferers, employees, and the neighborhood.
The United Against Racism initiative spans three main focus areas: 1) Leadership, staff, and tradition; 2) Patient care; and three) Community well being and coverage advocacy. The hope is that these efforts will assist advance the White House’s well being fairness targets of enhancing well being outcomes for underserved communities and addressing disparities in diet safety.
Mass General Brigham has carried out quite a few analysis research on the influence of diet on well being outcomes, together with how diet and nutritious diet could affect cognitive outcomes later in life, decrease threat of prostate most cancers, influencing response to most cancers remedy, affecting threat and severity of COVID-19, and lowering heartburn, amongst others. Mass General Brigham is one of the largest hospital system-based analysis enterprises in the United States, with an annual analysis finances of almost $2 billion. Currently, there are over 2,700 ongoing scientific trials to speed up bringing new remedies and therapies to sufferers and the world.
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an built-in tutorial healthcare system, uniting nice minds in drugs to make a life-changing influence on sufferers in our communities and other people round the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care throughout a system of tutorial medical facilities, neighborhood and specialty hospitals, a well being insurance plan, doctor networks, neighborhood well being facilities, residence care, and long-term care providers. Mass General Brigham is a non-profit group that’s dedicated to affected person care, analysis, instructing, and repair to the neighborhood. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s main biomedical analysis organizations and a principal instructing affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For extra data, please go to massgeneralbrigham.org.
