A first for the region, the Allegheny Health Network has established the Healthy Food Center — a fresh-food “farmacy” to provide healthy, mostly plant-based foods to patients as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes.
The center, announced Tuesday, is based on the “Fresh Food Farmacy” program, established at the Geisinger Health System in central Pennsylvania to treat Type 2 diabetes. It has attracted nationwide attention, including a recent visit from U.S. Health and Human Services representatives.
AHN’s Healthy Food Center, at 4921 Mend Way on the West Penn Hospital campus in Bloomfield, represents a pilot program in which patients with diabetes will be screened by their doctor for evidence they are “food insecure.”
“Food insecurity refers to a lack of available financial resources for nutritionally adequate foods such as fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains,” AHN said in a statement.
Those referred to the Healthy Food Center will meet with an onsite dietitian to discuss their dietary needs based on their condition.
After selecting the recommended food items at the center, which are free, the patient will leave with two to three days’ worth of food for all members of their household.
Patients will be allowed to visit the Healthy Food Center once every 30 days for six months as part of their referral. They also will have access to a range of education resources and nutrition counseling.
After six months, a primary care physician may refer the patient once again to the Healthy Food Center, if needed.
AHN is partnering with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank to help those experiencing food insecurity, which represents more than 350,000 people regionwide — or 1 in 7 adults.
Time and again there comes the pronouncement that food is medicine. With a plurality of American adults now burdened by at least one chronic disease, health care systems are putting that age-old wisdom into practice.
“As health care providers, we know that the impacts of food insecurity are far reaching and highly relevant to a person’s overall health and well-being,” AHN said, noting that about half of all heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes deaths in the United States are linked to poor diet.
“It is our mission at the Healthy Food Center to not only curb hunger in our region, but to link food and medicine so that patients can better manage their health conditions and lead healthier lives,” stated Stuart Fisk, a certified registered nurse practitioner who directs the AHN Center for Inclusive Health.
The center also is working in partnership with East End Cooperative Ministry to provide additional management and wrap-around services, such as children and youth services, housing programs and workforce development programs. The center also will share space with the Catholic Community of Bloomfield Food Pantry, which has provided supplemental food to underserved Bloomfield residents for 25 years.
If successful, the pilot could be expanded throughout Western Pennsylvania.
Enrollees in the Geisinger Fresh Food Farmacy program in Shamokin, Northumberland County, must undergo 15 hours of education at its 3,000-square-foot center. They then qualify to receive enough free food — mostly fruits, vegetables and whole grains — for 10 healthy meals a week for each patient and his or her family.
In just two years, the program has realized “over-the-top” success, with nearly every participant showing notable if not dramatic health improvements in blood glucose, cholesterol, triglyceride and even blood pressure levels, said Andrea T. Feinberg, medical director of Health and Wellness at Geisinger and “clinical champion” of the Fresh Food Farmacy.
Dr. Feinberg said the program, now feeding 360 people a week, has seen on average a 2 percent drop in Hemaglobin A1c (a two- to three-month average of blood glucose levels), bringing nearly all patients closer to the upper end of normal range of 6 to 6.5 percent. Generally normal is an A1c level in the range of 4 to 6 percent.
In the program, bad cholesterol levels (LDL) have dropped by 15 percent with an 18 percent drop in triglycerides, along with a 5-point drop in blood pressure. Although weight loss is not a program goal, many participants, Dr. Feinberg said, have lost 10 to 50 pounds and even more. Such results have improved patient health in dramatic fashion at a notably lower health care cost.
“We probably have received calls from 100 health systems, doctors and employer groups, and a lot of organizations are mimicking what we are doing because our results, with cost savings for health insurance,” Dr. Feinberg said.
The Geisinger program has partnered with the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, along with grants and donations, to provide healthy foods based on the similar DASH, Mediterranean and American Diabetes Association diets, which call mostly for whole-plant foods but allow for some lean meat protein but no red meat.
Dr. Feinberg said the whole food plant-based diet “is the best way for everyone to improve health, but we don’t push that on the patient.”
“I am a firm believer that the plant-based diet reduces the risk of cancer, stroke, heart disease and diabetes,” she said. “We start people on the ADA diet, which does permit lean meat protein, but we are not surprised if people respond by adopting a whole food plant-based diet.”
She said 80 percent of chronic disease is “metabolic,” generally meaning it has ties to diet but also can involve lack of exercise and tobacco use.
“We see someone come in with heart disease, emphysema and cancer when so much of this can be prevented,” she said. “When patients are critically ill, they drain the health care and social systems.”
David Templeton: dtempleton@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578. Twitter: @templetoons.
First Published: April 17, 2018, 2:00 p.m.