Food Really Is Medicine

The Food is Medicine program in Truro matches local agriculture with health care delivery - and a makes positive impact on patients.

What is the Food is Medicine program?

16 December, 2024 - TRURO, MA - A partnership between Sustainable CAPE and Outer Cape Health Care brings "food is medicine" to patients with 8 different diagnosis while at the same time supporting local agriculture. The work will become part Mass Health programming in January and could serve as a model state-wide.

Is food medicine?

According to both Sustainable CAPE and Outer Cape Health Care, the linkage between food and health has long been well established. For the eight diagnoses - which includes illness such as cardio-vascular issues and diabetes - targeted by this program, food truly has proven to be an effective medicine, creating measurable positive changes in patient outcomes.

The work has proven so beneficial, say program proponents, that MassHealth will be incorporating it in January. Sustainble CAPE founding director Francie Randolph, said that Food is Medicine could even serve as a model for elsewhere in Massachusetts or the country.

How does the Food is Medicine program work?

The program matches Outer Cape Health Services patients who have both one of the diagnoses and a participating health insurer with a customized bag of locally grown vegetables and proteins, as well as  recipes, cooking tips, and information about the farmer who produced the food. Health insurance covers the cost of the food, much as it would cover the cost of any other medicine.

Meanwhile, on the farmer's side, Sustainable CAPE sources the vegetables, fish, and meat from regional growers building an additional year-round predicable market for the products.

Is the idea of food as medicine new?

The concept of using food as medicine in a modern "prescriptive" concept has been tested in different locations over the past decade -- but the relationship between food and heath reaches back into history. The very roots of a connected food/health relationship reflect ancient ideas whose time has come again, said OCHS's director of health equity Leo Blandford.

"Generally speaking, what we are needing is a paradigm shift in how we think about health," he said. "So while while we need medications, we need these interventions through specialists, I think there are also ways that we have traditionally done things that we kinda' have strayed away from. So this partnership with Sustainble CAPE allows us to have an exploration .... this is not new information - in a lot of ways we are are returning to what we knew".

Why use local food?

A unique element of the Cape program lies in the way it connects locally produced food and health care. Food grown locally packs a bigger nutritional punch than food grown for its shipping attributes, said Randolph. The use of local producers also returns health care dollars into the regional economic ecosystem. The net result is both healthier people and a healthier community.

"What the research is showing is tht if these kinds of programs were scaled across the United States, we would be saving millions of lives and billions in health care costs," she said "If we can do that AND support our local farmers AND create a strong and more resilient food system that's local for all of us, it's beyond a win-win."