Food is Medicine Program

All requirements are outlined in the FIM Toolkit. At a glance, program participants become a full-choice healthy pantry, distribute food once-per-week minimum, and commit to offering nutritious varieties of foods following certain guidelines. This allows participants to accept patient referrals from healthcare providers who require specialized diets. 

You can participate in a number of ways! If you have a 501c3, you could have an on-site Food is Medicine pantry to refer your patients to. This is an amazing way for directly affecting health outcomes through nutrition, and we have multiple examples of hospitals and clinics who have this model. Another way you can participate is by referring patients to community Food is Medicine pantries and sharing health outcome data with us. 

Food is Medicine participation does require you to be a full choice pantry. However, we are happy to create a plan to help you become full choice! Most of our current participants became full choice after deciding to join the program, and you can too! 

We can provide assistance with your pantry layout and move to choice, signage, educational materials, community connections, and more! In many cases, we can provide capacity grant funding and food credits based on your needs.

All pantries of any shape and size can participate. However, grant funding must be prioritized equitably across our service area and is not always guaranteed. This doesn’t mean you cannot and should not independently decide to move to choice, get connected with healthcare providers, and prioritize nutritious foods for your neighbors, but we are happy to come alongside you and help make that a reality. We would love to see all our partners adopt a “Food is Medicine” approach!