Why Middle Tennessee Hospitals And Clinics Are Doubling As Food Pantries

There’s a new question hunger advocates want doctors and nurses to ask patients: Do you have enough food? Public health officials are realizing just how often the answer is, “not really.” So clinics and hospitals have begun stocking their own food pantries in recent years.

One of the latest additions is Connectus Health, a federally-funded clinic in Nashville. This month the rear of LaShika Taylor’s office transformed into a community cupboard.

“It’s a lot of non-perishables right now, just because we’re just starting out,” she says, but the clinic is working on refrigeration.

It’s not that patients are starving, Connectus co-director Suzanne Hurley says. It’s that they may have a lot of food one day and none the next. That’s no way to manage a disease like diabetes, she says.

“I can prescribe medications all day, but if they can’t do the other piece — which is a decent diet and just knowing they’re not going to have to miss meals,” she says, “medications have to be managed around all of those things.”

“Food insecurity,” as it’s known, has become a particular concern among seniors. The anti-hunger group Feeding America found more than five million older Americans don’t have enough food to lead a healthy life — a figure that has doubled in the last two decades.

And in response, food banks are increasingly meeting seniors where they get their health care. Hospitals from Utah to Massachusetts are sending patients home with food.

Blake Farmer WPLN

Nashville General Hospital started its food pharmacy just for cancer patients in recent years but opened it to all patients this year. Some food is specifically low sugar for diabetic patients. Other stables are low sodium for hypertension patients. They’ve had trouble keeping more expensive items in stock, like spices and fresh produce.

At Nashville General Hospital, Trudy Hoffman receives monthly infusions and now groceries.

“They just asked me, did I want a bag of food to carry home?” she recalls. “And I said yeah.”

The city-funded hospital started its pantry just for cancer patients in recent years but opened it to all patients this year and received a $100,000 grant in October to fund its expansion.

Organizers call it a “food pharmacy,” following the lead of places like Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia,” with patients getting a “prescription” for what to pick up. Some shelves have high-calorie superfoods for cancer patients to keep their weight up. Others have low sugar staples for diabetics or low sodium for hypertension patients.

Vernon Rose, who oversees the General Hospital foundation, says no one is surprised to see dozens of patients using the pantry each day.

“Because when you’re in a place like ours where 40% of the folks can’t even afford their health care, you can imagine the choices they’re making about food, pharmaceuticals, I need to get to work, I need to pay for this bus ticket, at the expense of something else,” she says.

The pantry operates mostly with grant funding. So Rose says the biggest challenge now is keeping it fully stocked with important but more expensive items like fresh produce and spices, which can be used to help patients keep some flavor while reducing salt in their diet.

The region’s local food bank, Second Harvest of Middle Tennessee, is pushing more health care providers to consider on-site pantries. The food bank also wants every patient — not just those suspected of being low income — asked about their food situation.

“We’re really pushing for universal screening, so you’re not picking who you’re asking that question to. The doctor already asks you really personal questions, and we don’t think twice about it,” says Caroline Pullen, Second Harvest’s nutrition manager. “I think people have always been scared to ask this question because they didn’t really have the resources of where to send them.”