Close to Home: An opportunity to improve health and social justice

Across the country, millions of Americans are living with serious illnesses, many of which are driven by the interrelated challenges of poor diets and food insecurity. And the problem isn’t limited to adults. One in 4 youth are prediabetic, 1 in 4 is overweight, and 1 in 8 have diet-related fatty liver disease. These issues disproportionately affect people from racial and ethnic minorities, people with lower incomes and those living in rural areas. Food insecurity, diet-related chronic disease and health inequities are intersecting and reinforcing.

Here in Sonoma County roughly 1 in 5 are food insecure. Heart attacks and strokes account for 26% of all deaths — and represent the largest source of preventable, premature deaths among residents under 65 years of age. Nearly 18,000 of us have diabetes that is uncontrolled, increasing our risks for complications, emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

One of the most promising strategies we have for interrupting this cycle is integrating healthy food interventions into our health care system — and making them covered benefits. Medically tailored meals, medically tailored groceries and more recently produce “prescriptions” have demonstrated significant potential to improve the mental and physical health of recipients while reducing health care costs and increasing health equity. One in 3 patients in hospitals enter malnourished. Those receiving medically tailored meals after discharge end up with 50% fewer hospital readmissions.

Four years ago, Ceres Community Project and Food For Thought helped launch an innovative statewide pilot program to evaluate the benefit of medically tailored meals for Medi-Cal patients with congestive heart failure. Thanks in part to that effort, this year California became one of just four states to include medically tailored meals and groceries as an allowable covered benefit in a Medicaid program. We have a long way to go before these interventions will be widely available to all those who could benefit, but the potential exists for California to lead the nation in building a health care system that recognizes the critical link between healthy food access and improved health and health equity.

Now there is another vital opportunity on the horizon — the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, which will be on Wednesday. The last conference, over 50 years ago, transformed the face of hunger with big bold ideas such as SNAP, WIC and school lunch programs. Now we have that chance again.

Along with our national Food is Medicine Coalition colleagues, we are urging the Biden administration to take federal action to make medically tailored meals and other research-based food interventions covered benefits in Medicaid and Medicare. Such decisive federal action would extend these smart, cost-effective strategies to millions of Americans who are disproportionately impacted because of income and/or age.

The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health has the opportunity

to catalyze a new legacy for a 21st-century U.S. food system that is resilient, equitable and nutrition focused. As a country, we need to take urgent steps to strengthen community health, reduce health care disparities and build racial equity. We have a proven path for leaders in both California and Washington to make landmark progress on those fronts — now we need state officials and health plans, and the administration and Congress’ support, to advance these vital goals. By empowering communities through foods that heal, we can make a stronger, healthier and more racially just community, state and country.

Cathryn Couch is CEO of Ceres Community Project in Sebastopol. and Ron Karp is executive director of Food For Thought in Santa Rosa.

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