Our Approach to Advancing Food Is Medicine

We are working collaboratively with federal partners and external organizations and communities to develop resources that can be used to advance Food Is Medicine initiatives across the United States. 

Our goals and activities center around listening to communities and implementation partners, cultivating partnerships with cross-sector leaders, and developing resources to support broad uptake of Food Is Medicine intervention models. 

Our activities include: 

• Engaging with a variety of external partners across the nation to better understand challenges and opportunities to advance Food Is Medicine models
• Centralizing information about federal Food Is Medicine models, initiatives, and federal, state, and local regulations and policies.
• Building a Food Is Medicine analytic framework to help standardize applied-measures of Food Is Medicine interventions
• Providing practical information and real-world examples to help communities design and implement effective Food Is Medicine pilots and policy-sustaining programs
• Facilitating knowledge exchange and continuing to identify opportunities for federal action to advance a robust Food Is Medicine landscape

Please note this virtual toolkit will be updated with tools and resources as the initiative progresses.

Food Is Medicine Summit 2024

On Wednesday, January 31, 2024, the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) partnered with the Office of Intergovernmental & External Affairs to host the first-ever HHS Food Is Medicine summit in Washington, D.C., an all-day event for policymakers, advocates, researchers, and a wide variety of stakeholders with equities in the Food Is Medicine space. The Summit served to engage cross-sector leaders in a substantive conversation about why food is medicine is important, what actions are being taken to advance uptake, and what stakeholders can do to bolster this work. 

The summit, which is part of the larger ODPHP-led Food Is Medicine initiative to unify and advance collective action, reflects Secretary Becerra’s vision of moving our country from an illness-care system to a wellness-care system through HHS’s broader Food Is Medicine initiative and other related government initiatives.