Louisville Medicine Volume 66, Issue 6 | Page 20

FOOD INSECURITY FOOD AS MEDICINE: Dare to Care Prescriptive Pantry at Family Health Centers Melissa Mather, MPH, FHC & Kristin Munro-Leighton, MPH, FHC W hen the nation’s first community health center opened in Mount Bayou in 1965, malnutrition and hunger was rampant in the rural Mississippi community. The health center’s leaders began giving prescriptions for food that allowed fam- ilies to buy basic food items at local grocery stores and have the bill sent to the health center. Government officials tried to end the program for being outside the scope of the health center’s work, but the center’s founder, Dr. Jack Geiger, argued that every medical textbook agreed the best treatment for malnutrition was food – and the program continued. Community health centers have long understood the complex relationship between food, health and poverty: patients need to eat healthy food in order to be healthy, yet families and neighborhoods experiencing poverty struggle with access to healthy food. This relationship is also well understood by Dare to Care, and is the 18 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE impetus of their Prescriptive Pantry Program, which addresses food insecurity by targeting health care providers who see low-income Louisville residents on a semi-regular basis. Nearly one year ago, Dare to Care approached the Family Health Centers (FHC) about becoming a new partner in this program. FHC is a community health center, with eight locations in low-income, medically underserved neighborhoods of Louisville. FHC provides adult and pediatric medical care, women’s health, and prenatal care – along with behavioral health, social services, dental care, a discount pharmacy, lab, radiology, language services and health education programming – to more than 40,000 patients a year. About 28,000 FHC patients live at or below the Federal Poverty Level; 23,000 patients have Medicaid, and nearly 8,400 are uninsured. No one is denied services due to inability to pay. Now, each month the Dare to Care truck backs down to the loading ramp at FHC-Portland and FHC staff and volunteers line