White House Conference Creates Opportunity

Oct 13

Dear Ceres Community Project friends and colleagues,

On September 28, the White House held a historic Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health – the first such conference since the inaugural White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health organized by the Nixon Administration in 1969.

The 1969 Conference launched ground-breaking – and life-saving – legislation such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and WIC, the SNAP program for Women Infants and Children. It galvanized the country around the critical issue of hunger. While we’ve made progress, we know that our country continues to face a nutrition crisis. Lack of access to enough affordable and healthy food is driving the epidemic of chronic disease in our country – the worst in the developed world, impacting children’s ability to learn and thrive, and costing billions a year in unnecessary health care costs.

Ceres Community Project has been at the forefront of this work, helping galvanize California in 2018 to fund the first-in-the-nation statewide pilot of medically tailored meals for low-income community members with congestive heart failure. We’re now helping lead the implementation of a ground-breaking new medically tailored meal benefit in the state’s MediCal program.

Last week’s conference announced a “whole of society” approach that’s laid out in the National Strategy document outlined below. Every federal agency, from US Department of Agriculture and Health & Human Services to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Veterans Affairs, has committed to concrete steps they can take to address these issues. And the conference has already galvanized $8 billion in new commitments from businesses, nonprofits, and universities to address food insecurity and nutrition-related chronic disease, improve nutrition education, and address the lack of nutrition education for medical providers.

This is a historic moment, when we have the potential to improve the lives of millions of people, today and for generations to come. Ceres Community Project is committed to do our part. That means continuing to expand the delivery of medically tailored meals and other supportive food services here in Northern California; ensuring that teens and young adults know how to make a healthy meal and understand the impact that their food choices have on their own health and the health of the planet; advocating that medically tailored meals and other evidence-based nutrition interventions be fully reimbursed in our health care system; and supporting policies that ensure that every person has access to the food they need to thrive.

I encourage you to take a look at the resources we’ve shared below. I hope you’ll be as inspired and encouraged as I am to continue supporting this critical work.

With hope,

Cathryn Couch

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Watch the Food Is Medicine Panel**

**Skip to the 25 minute mark for the beginning of the presentation!