For the next several weeks, Food Is Medicine participants will learn about cooking for their health.
The goal: connecting to care and monitor changes in A1Cs.
An A1C is a person’s average blood sugar level over time, and the results can be used to diagnose prediabetes and diabetes. Participants work together with a multi-disciplinary team of health professionals and A1Cs are measured at the beginning of the program and three months later to review progress. Patients are referred to the program through their providers.
Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas (CHC/SEK) has recently launched phase two of the Food is Medicine program. This phase will be implemented at the Wesley House Food Pantry. Food pantries often serve populations with high rates of nutrition-related chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension. Through the program Kylee Perry, SNAP-ED Nutrition Assistant from the K-State Research and Extension Wildcat District, presents an energetic and integrated cooking class through Create Better Health. Over the course of six weeks, she will go over various topics including MyPlate, physical activity, food safety, grocery shopping, budgeting and more.
Alongside the Sunflower Foundation’s Food Is Medicine initiative, CHC/SEK joined a cohort of statewide Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) to improve health outcomes for people living with diabetes. CHC/SEK began to pilot its Diabetes Grocery Prescription (DGRx) Program last year, which is led by Building Health Inc. (BHI), a subsidiary of CHC/SEK that is focused on improving health outcomes by addressing social determinants of health, including access to healthy and affordable food options. The team is excited to further the impact with a multi-agency approach supporting nutrition education and food insecurity.
The program offers free, medically tailored groceries and recipes for patients living with diabetes that also identify as nutrition insecure. The food is curated by CHC/SEK Dietitian Sherise Beckham who is also available to answer questions about their nutrition and diabetes or hypertension.
“The recipes give you some ideas of how to use the food pantry items that you’re always getting, rather than dumping it straight out of the can,” Beckham said to the class.
At the end of day one of their cooking class, participants were provided $75 to purchase kitchen supplies based on what they needed whether it was pots and pans, spice rack and spices, knife sets and so on. For the program’s duration, participants have unlimited access to produce items at the Wesley House Food Pantry Monday through Friday.
Funding for this project was provided, in part, by the Sunflower Foundation: Health Care for Kansans, a Topeka-based philanthropic organization with the mission to serve as a catalyst for improving the health of Kansans. Project planning activities included relationship building with CHC/SEK’s Wellness Department, its Diabetes Center of Excellence, CHC/SEK Physician Dr. Casey Hudson, K-State Research and Extension Wildcat District, and the First United Methodist Church of Pittsburg.