Campus: Tulsa
Email: Andrew-Helt@ouhsc.edu
"At the Root Cause Coalition National Summit, my colleagues and I presented lessons that we have learned from operating the Food First Pharmacy at the OU Health Physicians Family Medicine Center. The Food First Pharmacy provides fresh produce to any patient of the clinic weekly and distributes shelf-stable food kits regularly to patients of the student-run Bedlam Longitudinal clinic for patients without health insurance. We also shared about the impact that the Food First Pharmacy has had on the people we serve. At the conference, we were happy to present that a sample of our patients saw an increase in food security after enrolling in our program.
The best part of attending the Root Cause Coalition National Summit was learning about the efforts that many organizations are making to address social drivers of health such as food and nutrition security. These efforts ranged from clinic- and hospital-based food pharmacy programs like Food First Pharmacy to national strategies being pursued by federal agencies. Many creative approaches to increase food and nutrition security exist across the nation. The summit was a wonderful opportunity to learn from the many people whose creativity and hard work is driving these innovations in food security."
