Delaware’s Food is Medicine committee unveil plans for their statewide program.
The Delaware Food is Medicine Committee is utilizing $1 million in federal funding to create outreach and treatment programs through three main vendors: University of Delaware, Beebe Healthcare, and Deloitte Consulting LLP.
The first year will be mostly foundational work according to committee members, building points of access for FIM healthcare across the state, but with a focus on rural areas- especially in Sussex County.
Beebe Healthcare Director of Community and Mobile Outreach and FIM Committee member Kim Blanch says success will be measured in treatment of those communities.
“We’ll be looking at the number of lives served, we’ll be doing biometric intakes when they participate in the program and then
ensuring that we are achieving reductions in the conditions that we’re looking at mainly, statewide.” she said.
Blanch says the main issues they’re focusing on are heart disease and uncontrolled diabetes- with an additional focus on obesity in Sussex County.
FIM leaders note that rural areas often struggle the most to find healthcare and suffer the worst from healthcare costs.
The treatment is something Ag Secretary Don Clifton calls himself a “poster child” for, and he says he’s impressed by the committee's plans.
“It seems to me that all the essential components are in place to perform the outreach and the education to Delaware citizens regarding how food is essential to people’s health and can actually be used as medicine to improve chronic maladies” he told DPM.
Clifton adds that through diet alone, he's already dropped 60 pounds- regular exercise hasn't been possible for him due to longstanding knee issues.
Blanch says their first move will be to create a coordinated referral system through the state's healthcare providers to get qualifying patients on a Food is Medicine treatment plan.
