Central Texas Food Bank
From a community member - Juliana Gonzales
Every day across Travis County, people are having to make difficult tradeoffs between food and medicine, or transportation, or housing, all of which impact their health. The food insecurity rate in Travis County is 14%, and impacts 177,820 individuals in our county. Research shows that about one-third of individual are making tradeoffs between food and healthcare, and may be forgoing medicine, healthcare visits, or basic needs to feed themselves and their families. As healthcare providers are having to confront the significant negative impact food insecurity has on their patients, they want to provide an intervention. Additionally, providers are seeking innovative, cost-effective ways to improve health outcomes, including Food Is Medicine programming.
This is where Central Texas Food Bank (CTFB) and Central Health can expand on their existing relationship in a more robust way. CTFB provides benefits coordinators on-site at clinics to assist patients with SNAP and other benefits enrollment, and with navigating the complex eligibility and enrollment processes for those programs. Since October, almost 1500 Central Health patients have accessed our Mobile Food FARMacy, a Food Rx program which sends a mobile unit to clinics and directly links patients with healthy, dietician-selected groceries. However, these collaborations are limited and lack a comprehensive, strategic, well-resourced framework. We have identified an opportunity to develop more targeted and impactful patient-centered services by partnering with Central Health to assist low-income Travis County residents in accessing healthy, nutritious and medically-tailored interventions. Ultimately, this partnership represents an opportunity to establish concrete health outcomes data that will help shape state and federal policies in the Food Is Medicine realm.
As a member of the Feeding America network of food banks, CTFB is uniquely positioned to accelerate Food is Medicine initiatives and partnerships to maximize impact for Central Health patients in need of dietary and health-focused interventions. Food Banks across the country have launched a wide variety of Food Is Medicine programs and have developed best practices for partnering with health care sector stakeholders to achieve improved health outcomes for patients and their families. Access to healthy, nutritious food is critical in disease treatment and prevention.
The CTFB- Central Health partnership would consist of patient-focused Food is Medicine programming that provides a “screen and intervene” model that could include expansion of the Mobile Food FARMacy, medically tailored meals, medically tailored groceries, disease-centered nutrition education, and on-site clinic and hospital pantries. By implementing innovative interventions for Travis County patients, CTFB and Central Health will establish a proven model for Texas food banks and health care partners, meeting patients where they are to address their food needs with short term and longer-term interventions. Simply put, food banks can not only provide food, we can provide all-encompassing wrap-around services that also include outcomes measured and tracked by data with HIPPA- compliant systems.
As Central Health navigates budget priorities in the coming months, we support inclusion of new funding to enhance the existing partnership with CTFB through Food Is Medicine initiatives. Please consider identifying funds to support this important Food Is Medicine work and build a more robust partnership that results in better outcomes for patients and our community.
Thank you for your consideration! Please reach out with any questions.