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
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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