Bringing Food Home During COVID-19: Medically Tailored Meal Nonprofits Respond to a New Epidemic

Last Thursday, Karen Pearl and I participated in a webinar that covered the collective response to COVID-19 mobilized by God’s Love We Deliver and our peer medically tailored meal agencies across the country within the Food Is Medicine Coalition.

You can find the recording here.

COVID-19 is prompting health and government officials to encourage millions of individuals, especially seniors and people with compromised immunity or underlying health conditions, to shelter in place. In the wake of closed businesses, job losses, and school closures, emergency food programs are seeing unprecedented levels of demand. For nonprofit medically tailored meal providers, the situation is no different – except that the people we are nourishing during this crisis are living with serious illness, often at home without the ability to cook, and have specific nutrition needs that should be met to help them stay healthy and out of the hospital and the emergency room. Born during the AIDS pandemic, medically tailored meal providers have a comprehensive and unique understanding of what it means to respond in crisis. I hope you will listen to the webinar to find out about our joint mobilization to address this incredible need and how you can help.

The Food Is Medicine Coalition is a volunteer association of medically tailored, home-delivered meal providers across the country convened to provide a complete, evidence-based, medical food and nutrition intervention to critically and chronically ill people in their communities, to advance  public policy that supports access to medically tailored food and nutrition services for people with severe and/or chronic illnesses, to promote research on the efficacy of food and nutrition services on health outcomes and cost of care, and to share best practices in the provision of medically tailored meals and of nutrition education and counseling.