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Food is Medicine Initiative2025-02-20T18:54:06+00:00

Food is Medicine Initiative

Over half of American adults suffer from at least one chronic, diet-related disease. Though food is the culprit, it can also be the cure: food and nutrition interventions can aid in prevention and management, and even reverse chronic disease. Introduced at large scale, proven interventions can save thousands of lives and billions in healthcare costs each year.

Food & Society’s Food is Medicine Research Action Plan, published in 2022, quickly became the definitive go-to source of all Food is Medicine research—it is the only comprehensive overview of all peer-reviewed nutrition-intervention studies. The revision, published in 2024 with continuing generosity from the Walmart Foundation, fully updates the quickly evolving body of research and authoritatively describes the opportunities as well as the challenges of scaling, evaluating, and delivering health-promoting food where it is most needed. The report keeps equity and full community inclusion at its core.

Food & Society released the 2024 Food is Medicine Research Action Plan on April 9th. The presentation included a review of updated research and the action plan’s recommendations. A panel of discussion focused on what is happening on the ground in Food is Medicine.

Agenda

Welcome from Corby Kummer, executive director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute

2024 Food is Medicine Research Action Plan presentation, thanks to support from the Walmart Foundation, with co-authors:

Kurt Hager, PhD, MS 
UMass Chan Medical School

Alexandra Lewin-Zwerdling, PhD, MPA
Fruitful LLC

Food is Medicine On the Ground Panel Discussion with:

Luisa Furstenberg-Beckman, MPH 
Produce Rx Manager, DC Greens

Jillian Griffith, MSPH, RDN
Sr. Health Partnerships Manager, Amazon Access and Aspen Institute Food Leaders Fellow

Tom McDougall
Founder and CEO, 4P Foods and Aspen Institute Food Leaders Fellow

Pamela Schwartz, MPH
Executive Director, Community Health, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals

our advisors

  • Ann Albright

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    former Director of Division of Diabetes Translation, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention

  • Karen Bachman-Carter

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    former Public Health Nutritionist and Diabetes Educator, Indian Health Service

  • Seth A. Berkowitz

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of General Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  • Joslyn Brenton

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Associate Professor of Sociology, Ithaca College

  • Bridget Carle

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Senior Vice President, Public Sector Practice, Guy Carpenter

  • Juliana Crawford

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    National Executive Vice President, Consumer Health Solutions, American Heart Association

  • Cathryn Couch

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Founder and CEO, Ceres Community Project

  • Mitchell Elkind

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Chief Clinical Science Officer, American Heart Association

  • Kofi Essel

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Director, Food as Medicine, Elevance Health

  • Katie Garfield

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Director of Whole Person Care and Clinical Instructor, Health Law and Policy Clinic, Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Harvard Law School

  • Tiffany Gary-Webb

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology, and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health

  • Kurt Hager

    Author and Advisor, Food is Medicine

    UMass Chan Medical School

  • Sheila Hanley

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Senior Advisor, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center

  • Devon Klatell

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Vice President, Food Initiative, The Rockefeller Foundation

  • Zhongyu Li

    Co-Author and Advisor, Food is Medicine

    PhD Candidate, Nutrition Health Services, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

  • Jen Muse

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Associate Science and Medicine Advisor, American Heart Association

  • Vanessa Nicholson-Robinson

    Assistant Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine

  • Gita Rampersad

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    former Vice President, Equity and Programs, Feeding America

  • Pamela Schwartz

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Executive Director of Community Health, Kaiser Permanente

  • Hilary Seligman

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Professor of Medicine and of Epidemiology, University of California, San Francisco

  • Lauren Shweder Biel

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    former Executive Director and Co-Founder, DC Greens

  • Karen Siegel

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Epidemiologist, Senior Service Fellow, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  • Emma Steinberg

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Chef and Pediatric Hospitalist, Newton Wellesley Hospital

  • Andrea Talhami

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Programs Director, DC Greens

  • Jean Terranova

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Director of Food and Health Policy, Community Servings

  • Alissa Wassung

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Executive Director, Food Is Medicine Coalition

  • Marianna Wetherill

    Advisor, Food is Medicine Initiative

    George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair in Population Healthcare; Assistant Professor of Health Promotion Sciences and Family and Community Medicine

  • Norbert Wilson

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Director of Food and Agriculture Policy, Duke Divinity School and Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke

  • Allison Yoder

    Advisor, Food is Medicine

    Nutrition in Food Retail Program Development Fellow, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation

Our team

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