Karen Pearl, President & CEO; Alissa Wassung, Sr. Director of Policy & Planning; Dorella Walters, Sr. Director of External Program Affairs; Allyson Schiff, Business Development Associate; and Kelly Naranjo, Manager of Research and Evaluation attended, with research and data that prove that medically tailored meals work, and client testimonials, which underscore how critical our love-driven medically tailored meal program is to our clients’ health and overall well-being.
Our team championed the Food is Medicine Coalition’s recommendation to modernize Medicare and Medicaid to make medically tailored meals a fully reimbursable benefit for people across the country living with severe and chronic illness.
In addition to the above, our other key policy opportunities for the White House Conference are to: fully fund and implement large-scale MTM pilots in Medicare and Medicaid programs; expand research on MTMs; promote universal screening for food insecurity and malnutrition; increase nutrition education among healthcare providers; further build medical coding of food insecurity, malnutrition, and their treatments, and modernize healthcare regulation.
At God’s Love, we support these Food is Medicine Coalition priorities and believe federal and New York State policy should reflect them. Millions of Americans struggle with hunger and diet-related diseases that take the greatest toll on underserved populations. Medically tailored meals are a direct response to health inequity, food insecurity, and nutrition insecurity.