FreshRX: A Case Study in Disruptive Diligence

Abstract

Introduction

Hippocrates wrote “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children (SCFC) has taken that mantra to heart with its FreshRX program. An outgrowth of the Foundation’s award-winning Farm to Families food program launched in June 2010, FreshRX empowers local physicians to use fresh food as a tool to combat the adverse effects of poor nutrition. FreshRX disrupts the traditional medical mindset by offering doctors the chance to hand out an entirely new type of prescription—one for apples, carrots, broccoli and a whole host of farm-fresh foods.

Launched in June 2010, St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children’s Farm to Families (F2F) initiative was originally established to address the issue of inadequate access to healthy food in North Philadelphia. The concept—a modified community supported agriculture (CSA) program relying on numerous community partnerships to offer boxes of farm-fresh, wholesome foods at wholesale pricing on a year-round basis—was born out of internal strategic planning along with community needs assessments demonstrating that North Philadelphia families had extremely limited or no access to fresh, healthy food. If fresh food was available, it was often cost-prohibitive, especially compared with the highly subsidized, processed alternatives.

FreshRX takes Farm to Families one step farther by recognizing and responding to the specific health and psychosocial impacts of both a poor diet and food insecurity, including increased illnesses and hospitalizations, poor attention and academic performance and, especially troubling, a significantly higher risk of depressive disorders and suicide attempts.