New York City hospitals launch fruit and vegetable prescription program
July 30, 2013 | 08:09 AM
Two New York hospitals last week launched the biggest program in the nation allowing doctors to write prescriptions for fruits and vegetables redeemable at local farmers' markets for patients at risk of diet-related diseases and who live in underserved communities.
The program, known as the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program or FVRx, was organized by Wholesome Wave, a Connecticut-based group promoting fruit and vegetable accessibility for low-income people and to fight obesity.
Patients at the Harlem Hospital Center and Lincoln Medical Center will receive prescriptions that can be exchanged for coupons at farmers' markets participating in the New York City Department of Health’s “Health Bucks” program, a part of the city’s GrowNYC initiative to make produce available to low-income New Yorkers at the city's 142 farmers' markets.
Under FVRx, patients will receive one dollar in Health Bucks for each person in the family for at least four months so that entire families can change their eating habits. The patients will check in with their doctors to have their prescriptions reauthorized and to be weighed and have their body mass index evaluated.
The program will work with 140 patients — 70 in each hospital — and is expected to have an impact on as many as 700 people. It was made possible by a $250,000 grant from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.
Tisch, philanthropic co-owner of the New York Giants football team, made the grant as part of her fund’s Healthy Food & Community Change initiative to support novel strategies to increase access, availability, affordability, and knowledge of healthy foods and promote healthy choices, specifically targeting programs in high-need neighborhoods.
Tisch’s fund also backed the film “The Apple Pushers” and encouraged more mobile vendors of fruits and vegetables in low-income New York neighborhoods where it is difficult to buy healthy food.
In recent television interview at the Aspen ideas Festival, Tisch talked about the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription program and Wholesome Wave, headed by Michel Nischan, the chef at the Dressing Room Restaurant in Westport.
“Michel’s initiative is one of the most interesting I have seen out there,” Tisch said.
“This New York City Fruit and Vegetable Prescription pilot is our largest to date and it represents our first collaboration with a major hospital system,” said Gus Schumacher, a Wholesome Wave executive vice president who is a former Massachusetts agriculture commissioner and Agriculture undersecretary for farm and foreign agricultural services.
Schumacher participated in a news conference last Tuesday at the Lincoln Medical Center Farmers Market on E. 149th Street in the Bronx. Other participants were Tisch, New York Health Commissioner Thomas Farley and New York City Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs.
Thomas Farley
“This is probably going to prevent an awful lot of disease in the long term than the medicines we tend to write prescriptions for,” Farley told the New York Daily News. About 10 percent of New Yorkers do not eat fruits or vegetables each day, and the rate jumps to half the people in the Bronx, the Daily News said.
“Each dollar invested in Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program nourishes public hospital patients and their families, boosts revenue a farmers markets, and supports overall community health,” Gibbs said, according to a report in the Gothamist. “Farmers’ markets support the city’s efforts to keep communities fit by providing healthy and affordable dietary options in a localized setting.”
“Health Bucks are at the heart of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – helping New Yorkers in need supplement their diet with the foods that will benefit them the most,” New York City Human Resources Commissioner Robert Doar said in a news release.
“With Health Bucks and SNAP nutrition education programs, including our healthy eating and cost comparison Cut the Junk initiative, HRA continues its efforts to promote good nutrition habits among more families at the same time it ensures that they will have greater opportunities to get nutritious food with their benefits,” Doar said.
New York City already has the largest municipal farmers market SNAP incentive program in the nation, providing more than a half million dollars in $2 coupons to SNAP beneficiaries to buy fresh produce at farmers' markets.
Wholesome Wave has double-value coupon programs for the purchase of fruits and vegetables at farmers' markets and fruit and vegetable prescription programs in many states.
Results from a Wholesome Wave 2012 pilot program in communities where FVRx programs were launched indicated that the majority of patients increased fruit and vegetable consumption, made repeated visits to the farmers markets, and continued regular visits to the doctor. The pilot program was held in California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Texas, and Washington, D.C.
