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The organization annually receives Charity Navigator’s Four Star rating.ĭave has 29 years of experience in food banking in positions such as a national Feeding America Board member, past president of Feeding Florida, chair of the Feeding America eastern region, chaired various national task forces, and also served as a member of a bi-partisan Washington, DC think tank. Second Harvest’s annual economic impact in Central Florida is $187 million.

Last year, Second Harvest distributed enough food for 99.5 million meals, have trained and placed into jobs 325 graduates of their Culinary and Distribution Center Training programs and generated $100 million worth of SNAP benefits through their award-winning mobile outreach program. Second Harvest Food Bank serves a six County area in Central Florida through a network of 550 partner agencies. To see more, visit WMFE.For the past 17 years, Dave Krepcho has served as the President/CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida a member of Feeding America, the largest domestic hunger relief organization in the U.S. They might want to start by trying that beet and farro salad.Ĭopyright 2023 WMFE. It's a learning process for the patient." "Some people have told me and I'd rather die happy than to eat healthy," he said. Pagan says many people are accustomed to a lot of sugar and salt in their food. "There's no reason we can't have nutritional achievement as well as great satisfaction with the meals that are provided," she added. Food that is specially designed to meet your medical needs does no good just sitting uneaten on the plate. Meals on Wheels is urging Congress and the White House to make medically tailored meals widely available through senior nutrition programs and to make them reimbursable through Medicaid and Medicare, including Medicare Advantage.Īkobundu says those meals need to look and taste delicious. "Measures that have to do with blood sugar, measures that have to do with other clinical indicators also show improvement if folks receive medically supportive, tailored nutrition," Akobundu said.

"And some of those areas are HIV AIDS patients, hypertension or heart disease patients, diabetic patients, cancer patients."Īt Meals on Wheels America, senior director for nutrition strategy Uche Akobundu says medically tailored meals have a positive impact on health and well-being - and on concrete health measures, too. "We envision getting there through partnerships," she added. But she hopes to see it expand throughout Second Harvest’s seven-county region and serve patients with a variety of chronic conditions. Koffarnus says they’re starting with only 20 patients in Orange County referred by DaVita clinics. The meals are frozen and delivered once a week.
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would reduce hospitalizations and net a savings of nearly $13.6 billion a year.ĭawn Koffarnus, the chief health systems and financial officer at Second Harvest, says the pilot program is funded by the DaVita Giving Foundation and provides a free daily breakfast, lunch and snack to food-insecure patients with end-stage renal disease. Tufts University researchers found that delivering more of those meals in the U.S. It says the goal is to improve health outcomes, increase patient satisfaction and lower the cost of care. The Food Is Medicine Coalition, a national association, provides guidelines. Medically tailored meals are designed by a registered nutritionist for patients who are extremely ill. These meals have a little touch of that in there just to kind of give it a little bite." "That might be lemon juice, lime juice, different kinds of vinegars like balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar, white vinegar, any kind of vinegar you can think of.
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His kitchen compensates with aromatics - like celery, carrots and fresh herbs - plus acidic ingredients. Pagan said there's really no replacing the salt. Second Harvest executive chef Robert Pagan prepares beet & farro salad
