Health Care Sector Support for Healthy Food Initiatives

Unhealthy diets in the United States contribute to chronic diseases and their treatment costs. Health sector organizations are beginning to support initiatives that promote healthy eating in their community as a result of incentives for prevention in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA’s emphasis on prevention coincides with new farm policy programs intended to improve health and nutrition. Despite these synergistic opportunities for collaboration between health care and food organizations, few reviews have been undertaken to assess the extent to which they are occurring, the types of partnerships that have been formed, and impediments to collaboration that exist.  We solicited examples from food policy councils of their experiences with health sector organizations. We also reviewed community benefit reports from non-profit hospitals in Maryland and discussed opportunities with health sector personnel. We found that while hospitals, health insurers, and health centers have begun to support efforts to increase the affordability and accessibility of healthy food, these partnerships are in nascent stages, and the health sector’s familiarity with food policy councils, farm policy, and opportunities to collaborate with food-based organizations is not widespread.