Mid-Ohio Farmacy is Bringing Food-based Health Care to All
Mid-Ohio Farmacy started with a question: if you were going to address diabetes in a food-insecure population, what would you do?
In 2010, the question was posed to the food banks in Feeding America’s network when the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation gave the organization $3 million to address diabetes. Of Feeding America’s more than 200 members, Mid-Ohio Food Collective was chosen for the study, along with Coastal Bend Food Bank in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa, California.
Between February 2012 and March 2014, the food banks screened customers for diabetes and enrolled 687 people in a six-month program that provided them with diabetes-appropriate food boxes, blood sugar monitoring, primary care referral, and self-management support. “What we found was, when you provide [healthy] food to people that have diabetes [and] are food insecure … their diabetes outcomes improve,” said Dr. Amy Headings, MOFC’s director of research and nutrition.
The food boxes were a high-value, low-cost health care strategy. The team also learned that health care providers had no routine way to screen patients for food insecurity. The reason they weren’t screening patients, Headings explained, is because providers didn’t know what the resources were for people facing food insecurity. She described the moment as “a huge ‘ah-ha’ for us .”
“Part of it was raising awareness in the community [about] food insecurity and the impact it has on health outcomes,” Headings said. “I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress—not only with us, but a lot of other organizations as well—in acknowledging food insecurity, housing insecurity, all of those as contributors to overall health.”
Today, Mid-Ohio Farmacy helps people —more than 30,000 and growing —manage their health and well-being with the assistance of nutritious food. Together with local health care providers, Mid-Ohio Farmacy provides weekly access to fresh produce for patients enrolled in the program and their families. People sign up for the program with their health care providers and are issued a Farmacy card. This card allows patients to visit any of the 19 Farmacy locations in Central Ohio for their weekly produce order.
Mid-Ohio Farmacy works with several health care providers that screen patients for food insecurity and enroll them in the program. “As an individual, you can’t live a full, healthy, productive life without access to healthy food. We try to provide that,” said Jennifer Parsons, senior project manager for Mid-Ohio Farmacy. “And the way we do that is through that relationship with their doctor.”
As the Farmacy program continues to grow, Parsons and Headings are looking to the future. This year, the Farmacy team is partnering with WW (formerly Weight Watchers) to provide no-cost access to WW for Farmacy patients who are interested in improving their health and incorporating more nutritious eating into their lives. The team is recruiting 90 Farmacy patients to participate in a six-month feasibility study. Participants will have access to the WW app and virtual or in-person coaching. The primary objective is to test the feasibility of a commercial weight loss and wellness program with an established produce prescription program among individuals who are overweight/obese and experiencing food insecurity. The study will help inform future interventions among this population. After the study is complete, the plan is to apply what is learned to a larger program that can provide this service to more customers.
Eventually, Headings and Parsons would like to see at least one Farmacy location in each of the 20 counties Mid-Ohio Food Collective serves. They would also like to expand the number of health care providers they partner with and establish relationships with more managed care organizations.
Mid-Ohio Food Collective’s mission is to end hunger and co-create healthier communities, and Farmacy plays an important role in that work. MOFC believes that food is health, from early childhood development to healthy aging and the treatment of chronic diseases.
“To manage health requires healthy food,” said Headings. “The Food Collective is helping patients do their part in order to take care of their health.”