Health and Hunger
While our primary mission is to end hunger, the food bank also leverages the power of food to build healthy communities. We know that people living in food-insecure homes have a harder time accessing nutritious food, are more likely to suffer from chronic health conditions and face barriers to adopting healthy eating patterns. That’s why we have made extra efforts in recent years to establish partnerships that focus on increasing access to healthy foods and addressing social and racial disparities among the people we serve. These partnerships have included:
Produce Prescription Program
A USDA grant-funded program that helps hospital patients seek increased access to healthy fruits and vegetables as part of the improved health strategy for low-income, food insecure patients. In partnership with local healthcare partners, the Produce Prescription Program seeks to improve participants' dietary health through an improvement in diet due to increased access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Click here for more information.
Veterans Healthy Food Surplus
A partnership with Pershing VA Medical Center in Poplar Bluff to provide food-insecure veterans with supplemental food.
Prison Produce
A partnership with Southeast Correctional Center in Charleston where the food bank provides seeds to the prison’s Restorative Justice program for inmates to grow produce that is donated to the food bank and distributed through its network of pantries.