to nutrition security . We currently concentrate on nutritious food referrals , the middle intervention in the Food Is Medicine pyramid , and our future work will expand to support broader initiatives for residents at the “ base ” of this pyramid by bringing local farm produce directly to communities lacking access through our mobile FARMacy Market .
Nutritious food referral programs or “ Produce Prescriptions ” typically include two components : fresh produce access and nutrition and diet related chronic disease management education , which lead to improved longer term outcomes when linked together .
Community FarmShare currently supports three Food Is Medicine programs serving 87 residents experiencing nutrition insecurity and managing diet related chronic disease . Program participants receive weekly culturally valued fresh produce bags available for pick up at a community-based partner organization , or home delivered by volunteers when transportation access is a barrier .
Each Food is Medicine program is structured as a partnership between a community health clinic , a community based organization and nutrition education / diet related chronic disease management education provider . Our clinic partners — MobileMed , Care for Your Health , and Kaiser Permanente — carry out patient health screening and clinical testing and support program enrollment . Our community based partners — Hughes UMC and WUMCO Help — are the trusted connections in the community to link community members to a new program and also support produce bag distributions . Our nutrition education partner , Holy Cross ’ s Road to Health program , provided classes to program participants to empower residents to achieve long term positive health impacts through healthy lifestyle choices .
At the end of the 24-week fresh produce program in November , our clinic partners will again support clinical testing with respect to diet related chronic disease management improvement . Based on last year ’ s data , we saw a 72 % improvement in diet-related chronic disease indicators . We see that these programs work .
Recent research from Tufts University , Duke University , and the University of Texas , supported by The Rockefeller Foundation , represents the largest collection of findings to date on the effectiveness of produce prescription programs and their positive physical and mental impacts on participants and communities . The studies found that Food Is Medicine programs led to improvements in selfreported health status , fruit and vegetable intake , blood pressure , and blood sugar levels , as well as in rates of food security .
While we know that these programs work , access to fresh produce remains a key challenge . Food deserts exist in both urban and rural areas . Even if there are grocery stores in lower income neighborhoods that carry fresh produce , it is far more expensive than high sodium , low nutrient processed food . Further , inconvenient transportation issues and travel time to purchase fresh produce adds to the challenge .
Currently , very few farmers markets are located in the areas where there is a high need and low access to fresh produce . While some local farmers do accept SNAP , many do not , making farmers market produce out of reach for many residents . Out of 22 farmers markets in the Montgomery County , only seven accept SNAP ( and other benefit programs ) and are located in census tracts with the two lowest income brackets .
Looking ahead and learning from past experiences , we plan to operate much of our Food Is Medicine programming through a mobile Farmacy Market . It will enable
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