God’s Love Hosts the FIMC Accelerator

In April, God’s Love hosted colleagues from across the country for an intensive three days of learning as part of the national Food is Medicine Coalition Accelerator program.

In the Accelerator, we teach and develop MTM providers through a robust 10-month curriculum that includes 150 hours of training and technical assistance offered by webinars, multi-day virtual and in-person trainings, and targeted coaching and support. The goal is to scale the medically tailored meal model to advance health and health equity across the United States, reaching new states and regions that are not currently served by existing medically tailored meal providers.

The Accelerator was launched in June 2020 and has already worked with four annual cohorts, graduating 14 organizations with 4 more to graduate this June.

Their time at God’s Love was spent addressing topics critical to the MTM model, including kitchen operations, client services and nutrition protocols, packaging and distribution, healthcare contracting, volunteer services, and compliance, as well as strategies for business and financial planning and for incorporating MTM coverage into policy efforts both locally and nationally.

The Accelerator program is co-led by God’s Love We Deliver along with Community Servings, a Massachusetts-based medically tailored meal provider. The other partners are the Food is Medicine Coalition (FIMC), the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation of Harvard Law School (CHLPI)  and the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF).

This year’s participants are the Greater Cleveland Food Bank (OH), Dare to Care Food Bank (Louisville, KY), Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor, MI), and Meals on Wheels of Western Michigan (Grandville, MI). It was a pleasure to see how far they’ve come in developing their MTM program and how excited they are to be graduating and then launching their programs with local healthcare and philanthropic partners.