Finally, we had such sunshine for both of our market days last week! Saturday was gorgeous, and we had a great crowd! Looking forward to more beautiful weather and busy market days to come.
Last Saturday, we enjoyed
art by Ashley Bouton and
information from SeniorLIFE Indiana. We also welcomed two new vendors - The Spades and Wilds Market - and 8 Maples Farm joined us for the first time of the season!
This Saturday, stop by the
Artisan Tent to shop
handmade bath & body products by Lori Roberts.
This week, we also have a
guest blog post! Some of you may remember
Sarayna Schock from our Community Tent a few weeks back. Sarayna is a third year medical student from Penn State Hershey Medical Center and founder of Penn State ProduceRx. She has been researching the benefits of healthcare-agriculture partnerships in Central Pennsylvania since 2015. She was kind enough to share a post with us telling more about what she has learned. Read on!
...But first...
SAVE THE DATE!!
CUSTOMER APPRECIATION DAY is
Saturday, July 29th! We will have a full lineup of special tents, and a drawing for some of your favorite market goodies! Bring the whole family for a fun morning at the market!
The Benefits of
Healthcare-Agriculture Partnerships
Sarayna
Schock
In
2015 when I set out to start a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)-patient
partnership at our medical center, I was focused on helping connect patients
with quality, nutritious food to benefit their dietary intake and chronic
illnesses. It wasn’t until I began working closely with our initial partner
farm that I began to consider what the program could potentially mean for local
agriculture, local businesses, and the entire community.
I
come from a long-line of farmers on my father’s side and healthcare providers
on my mother’s side. I’ve come to appreciate that these two necessary sectors
do not need to be mutually exclusive. Only 40% of Americans today consume at
least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, the recommended amount by
US Dietary Guidelines (Guenther et al,
2006; Wilkins et al, 2015). Research
has shown that plant-based diets are associated with improved weight management
and reduced risk for chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular disease,
type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers (Estruch et al, 2013; Lock et al,
2005). This equates to decreased healthcare costs for patients, employers, and
the government. So why is it that healthcare-agriculture partnerships are so
few and far between in our country?
In
the past decade, there have been attempts to increase fruit and vegetable
consumption amongst patients or underserved ‘food desert’ communities. These
efforts have often utilized the ‘prescription-produce’ model in which
physicians “prescribe” quality nutrition with the hope that patients will view
the prescription with as much importance as they would a script for a statin to
treat hypercholesterolemia. Past interventions have ranged from adding fruits to
clinic offices to providing purchasing vouchers to grocery stores and local
farmer’s markets (Buyuktuncer et al,
2014; Cavanagh et al, 2016; Quandt et al, 2013). Some of these
interventions have even included one-on-one nutrition education or mentoring to
individuals newly introduced to produce. However little has been done to link
patients with Community Supported Agriculture.
Unlike
grocery stores and farmer’s markets that patients must travel to, some located far
from a patient’s residence, CSA programs often have pre-existing delivery sites
throughout a specific region for participants to chose from. CSA links consumers
with local farmers directly, allowing for patients to have an intimate
connection with where their food is coming from and the farmers supplying it to
them. These programs often include Open Farm Days or “Pick Your Own”
opportunities, allowing participants the opportunity to develop an even deeper
connection to the land their food is harvested from, as well as an appreciation
for the work that goes into supplying the contents of their weekly boxes. For
patients who have never seen an eggplant or kohlrabi before, receiving these
items in their weekly box along with recipe ideas encourages utilization of
produce that would have otherwise been skipped over at the grocery store.
Our
partnership model also benefits the local economy. Partner farms benefit from
the increased CSA share purchases, even while they offer the boxes at a small
bulk discount to our patients. The program’s Facebook page and website serve as
free marketing for the farms, as do the media opportunities the program sees due
to it’s novel approach. Nearly all of our partner farms sell at local markets,
allowing for additional purchases by participants, especially those closer to
the markets and/or more willing to drive the extra distance after experiencing
the quality of local agriculture. The farm’s participation in the program may
also be seen favorably by non-program CSA members and thus encourage new
non-program subscriptions and subscription renewals in this way. With new box
drop-off sites being offered at local businesses and farmers markets this year,
we anticipate increased profits for these local vendors as the box pick-up is
bringing in new visitors to these locations. Similar to our partner farms, we
also feature our partner markets and businesses online to increase marketing
for them. These new connections between patients, local farms, and local
businesses increase community-connectedness. In our pilot year, our initial partner
farm cited receiving moving personal stories of gratitude and appreciation directly
from program patients.
I
believe the ProduceRx program model is easily replicable at other health
systems across the country. I have found nearly all local farmers are
enthusiastic about potential partnership in such a model as most entered
farming to benefit the health of others while providing quality agricultural
products to the community. In my experience it takes initiative from somewhere inside
a health system to start such a program, as this is where the knowledge of
“chain of command” is essential to move such a program proposal through the
necessary channels to get approval and most importantly, support. I would
encourage Indiana Regional Medical Center to make contact with local farms,
three of whom have already expressed interest in participating in such a
program, to address the most recent Community Health Needs Assessment’s
identification of “obesity and overweight” as a major health problem and “healthy
eating” as a top priority in the region (IRMC, 2015).
Sarayna Schock is a medical
student at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania and founder
of Penn State ProduceRx (http://hmc.pennstatehealth.org/producerx).
She is a former Certified Pharmacy Technician and veteran of the United States
Air Force. Sarayna earned her B.S. in Environmental Studies from American
Military University. She enjoys traveling, cooking, and gardening in her free
time.
Buyuktuncer
Z, Kearney M, Ryan CL, et al. Fruit and vegetables on prescription: a brief
intervention in primary care.
J Hum Nutr Diet. 2014;27(Suppl. 2),186–193.
Cavanagh
M, Jurkowski J, Bozlak C, et al. VegieRx: an outcome evaluation of a healthy
food incentive programme. Public Health Nutr. 2016; doi:
10.1017/S1368980016002081.
Estruch
R, Ros E, Salas-Salvado J, et al. Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease
with a Mediterranean diet. NEJM. 2013; doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1200303
Guenther
PM, Dodd KW, Reedy J et al. Most Americans eat much less than recommended
amounts of fruits and vegetables. J Am Diet Assoc. 2006;106:1371-1379.
Indiana
Regional Medical Center. Indiana Regional Medical Center Community Health Needs
Assessment. 2015; https://www.indianarmc.org/media/1209/pmcn_irmc_chna_executive_summary_6-5-15_revised3.pdf.
Accessed May 2017.
Lock
K, Pomerleau J, Causer L, et al. The global burden of disease attributable to
low consumption of fruit and vegetables: implications for the global strategy
on diet. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 2005;83:100-108.
Quandt
SA, Dupuis J, Fish C, et al. Feasibility of using a community-supported
agriculture program to improve fruit and vegetable inventories and consumption
in an underresourced urban community. Prev Chronic Dis. 2013;10:130053.
Wilkins
JL, Farrell TJ, Rangarajan A. Linking vegetable preferences, health and local
food systems through community-supported agriculture. Public Health Nutr.
2015;18(13):2392-2401.
