HHS: Federal Food is Medicine Toolkit

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released its new Food Is Medicine Virtual Toolkit. The Toolkit was developed in response to the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health and a guide for communities to design and implement effective Food is Medicine interventions.

The Toolkit incorporates a whole-of-government approach and was a collaborative effort bringing together many agencies, including:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
• Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Administration for Children and Families
• Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• Indian Health Services
• Social Security Administration
• Department of Commerce
• US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
• Department of Transportation
• Veteran’s Affairs
• National Endowment for the Arts.

Toolkit creation and collaboration also included private sector organizations, researchers, academics, and CBOs, such as Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC, Tufts’ FIM Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, The American Heart Society, Instacart, Alameda County Recipe4Health, the Aspen Institute, and Kaiser Permanente.

Key resources include:

• Analytic framework – priority measurement domains and metrics to advance Food is Medicine implementation and evaluation
• Foundational materials – federal landscape setting and policy support tools
• Tailored state data pages – Medicaid and Medicare populations with potential benefit of food is medicine
• Federal Food is Medicine resource hub – information on relevant federal policies, regulations, educational tools, and funding opportunities to support food is medicine programs
• Promising practices – models/emerging practices for broad, scalable FIM implementation
• Bright spots – insights from innovators across the country and the FIM ecosystem