The Transformative Power of Food is Medicine: Cultivating Health and Economic Growth Across the Northeast

In the United States today, six in ten adults live with one or more diet-related chronic conditions. As healthcare costs continue to rise and illnesses like diabetes and cardiovascular disease remain prevalent, a powerful movement is gaining momentum: Food is Medicine (FIM).

Food is Medicine integrates consistent access to diet- and nutrition-related resources into traditional healthcare to manage and prevent chronic conditions. Rather than relying solely on clinical treatments, FIM recognizes that access to healthy, nutrient-dense foods is a critical component of public health. And nowhere is the opportunity more visible than in the Northeast, where dense urban populations, established healthcare networks, and a robust small-farm economy sit side by side.

How Food is Medicine Works

FIM is not a single initiative but a spectrum of interventions designed to meet patients where they are:

• Medically Tailored Meals (MTM): Home-delivered meals customized by a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist for patients with severe or complex conditions.

• Medically Tailored Food Packages & Groceries: Selections of minimally prepared grocery items curated as part of a treatment plan.

• Produce Prescriptions: Financial incentives or vouchers that allow patients to purchase free or discounted fresh fruits and vegetables at grocery stores and farmers' markets.

• Community-Level Healthy Food Programs: Initiatives that provide nutritious foods to populations at increased risk for chronic diseases associated with food insecurity.

The health outcomes are striking. A recent multi-site evaluation of produce prescription programs found significant improvements in fruit and vegetable intake, reduced household food insecurity, and clinically relevant improvements in blood pressure, BMI, and glycemic control (HbA1c) for adults. Researchers estimate that providing medically tailored meals to all eligible U.S. patients could prevent 2.6 million hospitalizations and yield $23.7 billion in healthcare cost savings in a single year.

A Catalyst for Local Economies

The benefits of Food is Medicine reach far beyond individual patient health. According to research from The Rockefeller Foundation, scaling FIM programs to reach the 43 million Americans who need them most could generate over $45 billion in state economic activity and create 316,000 jobs nationwide. When these programs prioritize local sourcing, America's small and mid-sized family farms could capture at least $5.6 billion in new revenue, a stable market that gives farmers the predictability they need to invest, expand healthy-food production, and transition to regenerative growing practices.

Seeing the Impact on the Ground

Recently, Savannah and I had the opportunity to see this intersection of community health and local agriculture firsthand at two operations that anchor the Northeast's food-as-medicine ecosystem from very different vantage points, and our conversations with a third have only reinforced how layered this work really is.

Brooklyn Packers, a worker-owned food distribution cooperative based in Bed-Stuy, has been quietly rebuilding the connective tissue of New York City's food system since 2016. The cooperative sources from farms owned by underrepresented farmers across the region, then sorts, packs, and distributes thousands of grocery bags each week through community farm shares, mutual aid networks, and its own Brooklyn Supported Agriculture program. Notably, Brooklyn Packers is also a named partner in

One Brooklyn Health's CSA initiative — a collaboration with GrowNYC and Cultivating Justice LLC that brings fresh, locally-sourced produce to OBH patients, staff, and the surrounding community. It's a textbook example of what FIM programs need at scale: a community-rooted distribution hub directly plugged into a hospital system.

Agric Organics, an urban farm in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, demonstrates the other side of that equation. Working entirely without synthetic chemicals, the team relies on compost, companion planting, cover crops, and crop rotation to grow microgreens, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, beets, and more. Their produce flows out to restaurants, CSAs, and farmers markets, and through Farm Store 99 in Springfield. They've also taken the FIM model directly to the clinic: through their Food as Medicine Initiative with Baystate Mason Square, Agric Organics runs a biweekly open-air market at Baystate's Mason Square neighborhood health center, accepting SNAP/EBT alongside cash and card — meeting patients exactly where their care already happens.

Just uptown from Brooklyn Packers, the Corbin Hill Food Project in Harlem offers a complementary model we've been in ongoing conversation with. Corbin Hill runs a produce prescription program that delivers biweekly food boxes to households referred by healthcare providers — focused specifically on low-income African American and Latinx communities, with affordability built in through SNAP-accepting copays. What makes their approach distinctive is that referrals are tied to food insecurity itself, not to a specific diagnosis, which expands FIM's reach to the families who often benefit most from earlier intervention.

Taken together, these three organizations make the Northeast story concrete: a Brooklyn cooperative moving food at scale into a major hospital system, a Massachusetts farm bringing regeneratively-grown produce directly onto a neighborhood health center's grounds, and a Harlem nonprofit operationalizing produce prescriptions for the communities most affected by food insecurity. The corridor connecting them is exactly where Food is Medicine policy can do its most meaningful work.

Looking Forward

As the Food is Medicine movement continues to grow — supported by federal initiatives, Medicaid expansion, and Northeast-based coalitions like Food is Medicine Massachusetts (FIMMA) — intentional policy design is key. By embedding local sourcing preferences into these programs, we can ensure that healthcare dollars not only improve patient outcomes but also strengthen the small farms, cooperatives, and community food hubs that make our region's food system possible.

At the Fullerfield Foundation, we believe that building stronger connections between healthcare and local agriculture is essential to ensuring the health, resilience, and prosperity of our communities for generations to come.