Dear Community,

In the greater NYC metropolitan area, God's Love We Deliver is the nonprofit provider of medically tailored, home-delivered meals and nutrition counseling for people with more than 200 different life-altering diagnoses. National Public Health Week is coming to a close, but as always, we join with our colleagues from other medically tailored food and nutrition service providers across the country in our dedication to ensuring our clients' access to quality healthcare and making important progress toward achieving health equity for our neighbors who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves and their families.

Our clients are living with critical illnesses and complex nutritional needs that can only be addressed with individually tailored, nutritious meals. In addition to a primary diagnosis, 90% of our clients have co-morbidities that further complicate their healthcare plan while rendering traditional food programs and some medical interventions ineffective. God's Love clients receive services from our team of seven Registered Dietitian Nutritionists who tailor each meal to meet each client's specific medical requirements, including their illnesses, medications, side effects, allergies, and other pertinent factors.

The need for medically tailored nutrition is on the rise: God's Love has grown 150% in the last 10 years. Despite the growing need, there is no dedicated federal funding for medically tailored meals unless a client has HIV, and even those funds are not adequate. God's Love leads the national Food is Medicine Coalition, where we work hard to change this policy landscape to ensure everyone living with severe illness is able to benefit from healthy, life-sustaining meals.

Together with our sister organizations across the country, we are aligning the goals of healthcare reform -- better health outcomes, reduced healthcare costs, and improved patient satisfaction -- with our programs and aiming to ensure that medically tailored meals are supported in healthcare policy at the national, state and local levels.

Healthcare starts with healthy food. Thank you for helping us work to ensure everyone's right to health, including one of the most under-served and isolated populations: those who are sick and unable to take care of their most basic need -- nutrition.