Nutrition and Food Insecurity

Helping families access healthy food

It's no surprise that eating a variety of fruits and vegetables helps to protect one's health. But most Americans don’t eat a healthy diet and aren’t physically active at levels needed to maintain proper health.

Fewer than one in three adults, and an even lower proportion of adolescents, eat the recommended amount of vegetables each day. It can be especially challenging for our neighbors living in poverty to acquire affordable nutritious food they need to stay healthy.

In 2023, our WellSpan team conducted 400,000 screenings and identified more than 37,000 patients with food insecurity.

Investing and innovating

During the past three years, WellSpan has invested more than $1 million to support our community partners in addressing hunger in all our communities. Recently, WellSpan awarded two multi-year grants to partners serving counties experiencing the greatest food insecurity gap.

These initiatives will:

create a mobile Women, Infant and Children (WIC) and food-centered self-sufficiency program in Lebanon
build an innovative online food pantry order and delivery program in York that will prioritize medically compromised and chronically ill patients.

Working together to help families access healthy food

Through ongoing coalition participation and other community collaboratives, WellSpan supports programs and initiatives that benefit many families in accessing healthy food.

Approximately 6,000 individuals are served annually through WellSpan programs and partnership programs across our service area.

Primary programs, not including case management referral and navigation, include:

This initiative provides educational resources about healthy eating to community agencies, worksites, schools and markets throughout the year. The program features a different fruit or vegetable each month along with resources to explore, taste and learn about the importance of eating a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables as part of a regular diet.

Program goals:

Collaborate with community partners to create repeated exposure of consistent messages about fruits and vegetables at multiple locations in the community.
Increase knowledge of, familiarity with, and preference for a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Encourage consumption of locally grown foods by connecting individuals and families to local farm markets.

WellSpan provides free monthly posters or signs with simple serving tips for the featured produce to a network of strategic partners – farmers’ markets, schools, libraries, community sites, worksites, food pantries and downtown corner stores. Individuals, organizations, and businesses are welcome to download, reproduce and distribute the monthly resources.

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Market Bucks is a multi-tiered, food-as-medicine program that includes tailored nutrition incentive resources designed to support the care and treatment of food insecure patients.

Fruit and vegetable vouchers were distributed to 569 patients in the last year, from select WellSpan specialty services such as:

bariatric surgery
cancer centers
heart and vascular services
maternal health
population health care management

Vouchers were also given out at community partners, including:

residents from the Towers at Falling Spring in Chambersburg
Family First Health

Market Bucks vouchers were also distributed through a pilot project with the American Heart Association aimed at increasing access to fruits and vegetables for older adults enrolled at Windy Hill on the Campus Senior Center in Spring Grove, York County. The center hosted a pop-up market one-to-two times per month, with a total of 299 vouchers used by members shopping at the market.

During the most recent harvest season, Market Bucks contributed nearly $27,400 in revenue back to local farmers and growers.

The Healthy Options project addressed hunger for 155 families (614 individuals) and 75 seniors in partnership with seasonal farmers markets and a local grocery store.

The goal of this innovative community-based program is to address the needs of local families who are experiencing food insecurity but may not be eligible for food assistance programs. Healthy Options provides vouchers to families and offers a series of educational workshops, farm tours and classes that instill nutrition and healthy lifestyle lessons.

Similarly, the goal of the Fruit and Veggie Bucks program is to enable SNAP-eligible Adams County residents to purchase additional fresh fruits and vegetables at their local Kennie’s Markets from October through May. Last year 372 families (951 individuals) benefited from this program.

Cooking healthy is an essential part of improving or maintaining overall health and managing chronic conditions. Using the cooking demonstration facility at WellSpan's Heart & Vascular Center in York, dieticians and health educators are serving up ideas to people of all ages for healthy eating.

Hands-on cooking with children, live cooking demonstrations for Winter STREAK and recorded heart healthy cooking videos are all part of the variety of programming under way.

Health educators engaged 53 children (ages 6 through 12) in hands-on cooking demonstrations where they learned the art of food preparation for families. Participants prepped and tasted the meal and took home all the ingredients necessary to prepare that recipe at home for a family of four.

Winter STREAK provided 158 individuals with heart-healthy live cooking demonstrations. An on-demand web-based library of recorded videos on cooking for heart health is being developed with a dozen recipe demonstrations already produced.

Shelf-stable meals help to meet immediate needs of food-insecure patients until case management completes community-based referrals.

Nearly 1,000 shelf-stable meal kits were distributed to patients upon discharge from eight hospitals and in physician offices across our entire service area.

WellSpan Community Health supported a collaboration between Penn State Nutrition Links (PSNL) and the Community Progress Council – Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program in York County.

Women enrolled in the WIC program are eligible to participate in a series of free nutrition education classes to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve a healthful diet using WIC eligible foods as a resource. WellSpan provided mini electric food choppers for 40 participants.

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