Headline
Guidance and tools for food banks to partner with health care organizations to address food insecurity and improve health outcomes.
Context
Food insecurity affects health and quality of life, elevates risks of chronic diseases and health complications, increases emergency room visits, and drives avoidable health care costs. Certain racial and ethnic groups face higher disparities when it comes to food insecurity, health care access, and health outcomes. This toolkit provides support for food banks to engage in partnerships with local health care providers to enhance food security, nutrition, and health equity.
About this Tool
This toolkit offers a suite of resources, and links to other resources, to advance food banks’ efforts in health care partnerships. It is divided into the following sections:
- Assess: Provides assessment tools for health care partnership readiness and capacity, as well as specific recommendations for food banks to establish health care partnerships, including tips for food bank executive and board leadership and information on culturally inclusive food services.
- Prepare: Offers practical guidance to proactively identify organizational needs, including recommendations for delegating and hiring, and leveraging local data to set goals.
- Plan: Highlights important considerations to consider when developing effective partnerships and setting up initial meetings to establish the foundation for a successful partnership.
- Implement: Describes practical implementation strategies, including making referrals for patients who screen positive for food insecurity and connecting them to nutrition resources, helping them apply for other nutrition programs, and/or assisting them for emergency food.
- Evaluate: Outlines guidance on how to design and conduct an evaluation.
- Monitor and Evolve: Provides recommendations on how to track learnings, refine programs, adapt to external pressures, and work to sustain these programs.
Takeaways
Food banks and health care providers seeking to partner with food banks can benefit from this guide to develop new partnerships to address food insecurity and improve health outcomes.