What if we could prescribe food as medicine?
By Vivian Barad, Rachel Maloney, Rita Nguyen, MD
Gleaming white and pastel exhibit booths towered around us at the American Academy of Pediatrics conference. Each one glittered with chrome details, well-positioned spotlights, elegant modern furniture, plush silvery carpets and massive photos of cherubic babies and freckle-faced kids. It was like walking down 5th Avenue at night if it had been taken over by pharmaceutical companies and children’s hospitals.
Then there was our booth. It had plain wooden shelving, a butcher block counter and a cornucopia of fresh fruits and vegetables, like kale, eggplant, imperfect apples, pumpkins, bananas, hefty carrots still a bit dirty from the farm, all spilling out in an exuberant, bountiful mess. We had not planned for carpeting but the cement floor seemed appropriately like a grocery store. All in all, the Food Pharmacy booth was a mix of farmers market and a family-friendly kitchen.
Designers at IDEO had created the booth with our collaborators — led by Supervisor Wilma Chan and her “ALL IN” Alameda County initiative to end poverty and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland along with Alameda County Public Health Department, Alameda County Community Food Bank and Dig Deep Farms. Their Food as Medicine Initiative represents a collaboration that is reframing how food and healthcare systems can work together to foster healthy communities. The Initiative also aims to engage policymakers and taxpayers around this important work.
As a group, we are working to transform primary care through Food Pharmacies, enabling doctors to prescribe food as medicine and reimagining nutrition education with hands-on learning and access to healthy food.
We operate with the understanding that access to healthy food and positive food behaviors can fundamentally change children’s lives.
The Food as Medicine Initiative is already in effect through a pilot program with 100 families in Alameda County with children who are facing diabetes. Our goal was to create a booth that would capture the essence of a Food Pharmacy and inspire others to bring the concept home to their healthcare systems.
Over the course of three days, pediatricians and policy makers, drug reps and hospital administrators came to check out our Food Pharmacy booth. They wanted to know what it was and how it could work. How could they launch one in their community or clinic? They shared stories of interventions and studies they were doing or wanted to do. And they told us how important this effort was.
In a sea of highly polished marketing, our booth was built on the principles of human-centered design. In that context, our message was made abundantly clear: Health care must meet people where they are. If food access and cooking skills are what people need to reach their health goals, then that’s what we need to create.
The booth represented our vision of a place where people could try new, healthy foods; learn hands-on cooking skills using nothing more than a microwave or a hotplate; get tips on how to update Grandma’s beloved pozole recipe or her meat lasagna or collard greens.
We wanted them to leave with bags of free groceries, the know-how to make it taste delicious, and the realization that all this is part of their therapeutic care plan.
It’s not about handing out free food; it’s about building healthy practices and making sure everyone has access to healthy food. We can do this by building creative partnerships with healthcare, food advocates, and policymakers. Let’s start talking about food as medicine.
To get in touch with us about the Food Pharmacy project, send me a note at vbarad@ideo.com.
