Grandmothers have said it for eons: “You are what you eat.”
Now, a 20-year grassroots movement in the United States to connect healthcare with fresh and nutrient-dense food is gaining attention and investment.
This Resource Roundup packages together a few of the reports and webinars we have found most useful lately for understanding the food as medicine trajectory and, most importantly, how to connect local food producers into new food as medicine opportunities.
Local Innovation
Produce prescription programs are the groundbreaking innovation that community members and local food advocates have pioneered over the past couple decades. They have partnered with healthcare providers and some insurance companies to cover the cost of healthy and local foods prescribed to patients with chronic medical conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. The results are impressive and now spurring greater industry action.
Ensuring that high-value local food is front and center as the healthcare industry opens up to “food as medicine” strategies is a significant need and opportunity. Heartland Food Business Coalition partners are working with each other, and with farm and food businesses in their home regions, to understand these developments and advance local food as medicine.
Get Ready
Getting up to speed and organized for food as medicine is important now for local food producers, distributors, and supporters.
Food manufacturers are busy developing precision nutrition products for medically tailored meals and other emerging food as medicine markets. Opportunity exists to stake a claim for food produced locally and lovingly, by people and places, and regenerative agriculture practices, critical to our food secure future.
For Sellers
Local Food Marketplace is a technology platform for food hubs, farms, and others selling and distributing local food. Local Food Marketplace has produced Food as Medicine resources for those in the business of local food.
Their recent webinar Farms and Food Hubs: How to Build a Food as Medicine Program includes practical insights from Brent Ling, manager of the National Produce Prescription Collaborative; Julie Barlow from FreshRx Oklahoma; and Alicia Fischweicher from Farmshare Austin.
Local Food Marketplace has also produced a free 22-page guide informed by these experts and other local food sellers working in the food as medicine field.
Finally, Local Food Marketplace has posted a Resources for Food as Medicine Programs list that covers operating and funding local food as medicine programs along with a list of places to go for help, from groups working to build food as medicine programs to research sites with valuable statistics.
For Organizers
The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School is actively working to advance food as medicine. One Center report — Maximizing the Impact of Nutrition Interventions with Local Food Procurement — is the best overall primer we have found for navigating the local food opportunity in Medicaid, where food as medicine has “gained particular momentum.”
The report focuses on Medicaid because many states are using Medicaid flexibility to scale food as medicine programs. The content and recommendations could apply to other public insurance programs, as well.
What is so great about this report?
It is like a walk through the weeds of government procurement with someone who knows this world inside out, and who also knows how to explain it so you can navigate it. Not only that, the report guides you down different approaches to integrating local food into Medicaid food as medicine programs, including examples and resources.
Keep this report, Maximizing the Impact of Nutrition Interventions with Local Food Procurement, handy for guidance and reference.
Coming Up
Coming soon, Wednesday, January 21, 2026, USDA will host a Food is Medicine Webinar featuring successful models across the Southeast “focused on healthcare systems and building resilient food systems for local economic development, and regional rural prosperity.” It’s another opportunity to learn from hands-on practitioners.
On March 6 in Nevada, Missouri, the regional Farm to Fork Summit will feature Erin Martin, co-founder of FreshRx Oklahoma, as its keynote speaker.
The event, hosted by Heartland Food Business Coalition partner New Growth, is a gathering of food and farm businesses and supporters from the bi-state Missouri-Kansas region and beyond. Check out the Farm to Fork Heartland group on Facebook to find similar events or share your own.
[Editors note: Partners that built the 5-state Heartland Regional Food Business Center currently work together as the Heartland Food Business Coalition. We aim to continue building a robust business support system for the local and regional food and farm enterprises that are critical for community economic development and a food secure future. Contact Us.]