Food Is Medicine: Incorporating Pantries into Clinical Care
The BMC Preventive Food Pantry illustrates the role health care institutions can play in supporting patient nutrition and well-being.
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Food is increasingly recognized as a critical component of health care. The Food Is Medicine (or Food as Medicine) movement builds on this recognition by integrating food-based interventions into clinical care to help patients prevent and manage health conditions. Alongside medically tailored meals, groceries, and produce prescriptions, food pantries located in hospitals and clinics allow providers to address patients’ nutritional needs as part of their medical care.
This vision was realized over 25 years ago by Drs. Deborah Frank and Alan Meyes, who founded Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) Preventive Food Pantry in response to a recurring problem: patients could not afford enough nutritious food to feed themselves and their families. Serving more than 1,000 patients in the first month alone, 80,000 annually, and 1.5 million since its opening, the Preventive Food Pantry is a public health success story. Today, BMC clinicians refer patients who screen positive for food insecurity to the on-site pantry where, twice a month, they receive enough food to feed their household for several days. Shelves hold meats, pantry staples, and most notably, fresh produce, some of which is provided by BMC’s own Rooftop Farms.
The pantry’s success rests not only on its food supply but on its human expertise. Pantry manager Latchman Hiralall uses his dietetic technician training to tailor each patient’s food to their needs and preferences, ensuring alignment with their medical care. The pantry anchors BMC’s broader food-is-medicine infrastructure, known as the Nourishing Our Community initiative, which also includes Rooftop Farms, the Teaching Kitchen, and Nourishing at Home. This established infrastructure, together with Boston University’s newly funded Food Is Medicine Affinity Research Collaborative, provides a strong foundation for advancing interdisciplinary research, implementation, and evaluation of food-is-medicine interventions.
The BMC Preventive Food Pantry illustrates the role health care institutions can play in supporting patient nutrition, but its impact depends on patients being able to reach and use it.
Since BMC’s Preventive Food Pantry was founded in 2001, food pantries located in health care settings have emerged across the country for different populations, contexts, delivery approaches, and dietary patterns. Some operate as networks across community clinics. San Francisco’s Food as Medicine Collaborative, for example, operates 12 food pharmacies in clinics around the city. Others target priority populations. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Food Basket serves patients with cancer and their families, who often face financial burdens during treatment. Programs also vary in how they deliver food to patients. For example, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Food Pharmacy, launched in 2018, supplements its on-site pantries across ambulatory care sites with home delivery options for families with children. Others tailor the foods they offer. The Massachusetts General Hospital Revere Food Pantry, for example, provides plant-based options.
Despite this growth, many such pantries remain underused. Only a fraction of the patients who receive referrals visit for reasons that are poorly understood. This gap matters most for groups with the most pressing nutritional needs, including pregnant patients, for whom adequate nutrition shapes the health of mother and child.
In response, our team at the Boston University School of Public Health, with support from the Boston University Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) program, is exploring reasons why pregnant patients at BMC have difficulty using the pantry. To build a rich understanding of the referral pathway, we are interviewing prenatal patients and staff in BMC’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Nourishing Our Community program involved in pantry administration. Findings will inform strategies to improve pantry access for pregnant patients.
The BMC Preventive Food Pantry illustrates the role health care institutions can play in supporting patient nutrition, but its impact depends on patients being able to reach and use it. As co-located pantries continue to expand nationwide, lessons from this work can help other hospitals and clinics ensure that therapeutic food programs reach the patients who need them most.
