thank you guys so much for the warm
welcome
I’m excited to talk to you today about
reimagining our health care system but
the story starts for me quite a while
ago I became a vegetarian when I was 16
a really long interest in healthy eating
ate my first organic produce at the Ann
Arbor food co-op in the mid 70s like
some of you I have a dog-eared copy of
Frances Moore Lappe Hayes died for a
small planet on my shelf that I still
use and then in my 40s I started in ran
a home delivered meals service here in
Sonoma County called speranza from 1993
to 2003 and then in 2006 I got a phone
call that changed my life my
horseback-riding teacher called and she
said to me my daughter Megan needs to
get a job over the summer and I want her
to learn how to cook and I want you to
hire her so I had the same reaction you
just did it’s I didn’t have a job
opening for one thing but it’s hard to
hire someone for a cooking job that
doesn’t know how to use a knife that is
a problem but this mom was pretty
persistent and I did have a tendency to
want help and so a couple weeks later I
remembered that a good friend of mine
was helping a family in Sebastopol the
mum was Stage four metastasized breast
cancer and there were a couple of
preteens in the family so I put a small
project together that summer and one
afternoon a week Megan and I got
together and I taught her how to cook
and we made meals for that family and
for two other families that I had found
who were also struggling because of a
health crisis the first day that Megan
and I cooked together the dad in this
family stopped to pick up the meals it
happened to be on his way home from work
and I had never met him either so I
introduced myself and I introduced Megan
and I was just making small talk I
started sharing what we had made for
them and what I know now is in that
family
everyone is terrified and the parent
who’s well has this enormous burden he
was not only working full time he was
also caretaking for his wife and trying
to keep some semblance of normalcy for
the children in that family and as I was
talking you could see the utter relief
in his whole being that someone was even
providing this tiny bit of support for
them and in that moment I glanced over
at Megan and she was about six inches
taller it came and went the moment came
and went but three weeks later I woke up
at 6:30 in the morning with a vision for
what has become series community project
teens just like Megan would come into
the kitchen and learn about cooking and
eating healthy food and the meals they
made would go to families in our
community who were struggling because of
a health crisis just like that family
with the mom who had Stage four
metastasized breast cancer it seems like
such a simple idea so over the last 12
years about 4,000 families have
benefited from our work here and here in
Sonoma County and also Marin and about
3,000 young people have been become part
of the program and what I’ve learned is
that most of the clients that we serve
would never have had healthy food to eat
without us there’s a whole host of
reasons many of them live alone without
a support system they’re too sick to
shop and cook and most of them are poor
and that makes a difference over the
last 12 years I’ve learned a lot about
the difference that healthy food can
make for people like our clients I’m
going to talk about some of the numbers
and while I do I hope you’ll keep these
faces in your mind because these are
about real people 42 million Americans
are food insecure and that includes 13
million children food and security means
that people people don’t have enough to
eat
they don’t have enough good food to eat
and that makes them sick and in fact
it’s costing us 77 billion dollars a
year in unnecessary health care costs
and sixty percent of deaths in the u.s.
now one of the wealthiest countries in
the world are related to poor diets I
mean just stop and think about that I
was talking to someone at my gym
this morning and she said 60% and I said
yes 60% 60% of deaths in the US are
related to poor diets we are simply
eating ourselves sick and the other
thing we’re doing is we’re radically
under investing in food if you think
about school lunch you think about the
older Americans Act do you think about
WIC you think about food stamps we’re
radically under under investing in those
programs and this is what this is what’s
happening now the good news is oh
there’s one other thing that I want to
share the other thing that’s really
interesting is only 10 percent of our
health outcomes are related to what
happens in the doctor’s office or the
treatments that your doctor can
prescribe for you that’s the same amount
as our genetics 30 percent are related
to the choices you and I make every day
it’s good news and the bad news the good
the the choices that we make every day
in our own lives in our day to day lives
but more importantly 40 percent are the
social determinants that limit and
constrain those choices for those 42
million Americans who are food insecure
and many others so that’s pretty
astonishing the good news is there’s a
quiet revolution happening around the
country really looking at challenging
the idea of what health care should pay
for and should prescribe and pay for and
though the field is really being led by
a coalition called the food as medicine
coalition so these are agencies who
provide medically tailored meals to
people who are dealing with serious
illnesses they began during the AIDS
epidemic in the mid 80s and they have 30
to 35 years of experience now providing
meals to that population and series is
really proud to be a member of that
group and over the last five or six
years that group has started to do
significant research studies on the
difference that it makes when people get
get food so it’s not rocket science
right when people have quality food as
part of their treatment they feel better
and they do better and what that means
is they’re less likely to end up in the
emergency department they’re less likely
to
we hospitalized and when they are in the
hospital they’re much more likely to be
discharged to home instead of a skilled
nursing facility and all that saves
money on the healthcare side what we’re
finding is somewhere around 16 to 20
percent net savings in the healthcare
field now we’re taking that research to
the next level here in California and
thanks to the California Legislature
we’ve just been awarded in last year six
million dollars to conduct a three-year
research study with medical patients who
have congestive heart failure so series
and five other agencies across the state
from San Diego all the way up to Sonoma
County are part of that study over the
next three years we’re going to be
providing a thousand medical patients
with 12 weeks of home delivered meals
and four visits with a registered
dietician and we’ll be measuring the
impact of that on their health outcomes
and comparing that to 4,000 similar
patients so unfortunately in order to
change policy we have to show that
there’s cost savings and so it really in
some ways it comes down to the numbers
so remember we said 16 percent net
savings in the studies that have been
done so far here’s just a very
conservative estimate of what this might
mean in California so if we can save
just 5% net savings on the healthcare
cost side when you translate that across
57,000 hospitalizations for heart
disease in California you’re talking
about almost a hundred million dollars a
year in cost savings but like I said
this isn’t about the dollars this is
about real people and I’m really excited
to share a very short video of Candace
and I I want to thank Candace for being
willing to be interviewed that’s a
really hard thing for someone in her
situation to do and I also want to thank
project angel food in LA or colleague
organization who served Candace we don’t
a really tough struggle for my life for
the last five years
I’ve dealt with amputation I’m having
really bad battles with infection
congestive heart failure for me was like
I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t lay down
flat and breathe without feeling like I
was like drowning my legs were extremely
heavy just tired it was very scary
because I didn’t I wasn’t sure what was
going on
basically the doctor told me your heart
is failing and there’s fluid backed up
in your body the first time I was
hospitalized for about seven days for a
while yeah it was weeks at a time and
then I would come home and I would need
in home nurses and things because I
always had like PICC lines I have a lot
of scars you can see from having tubes
inserted here and there and PICC lines
and tunnels and things just trying to
keep myself alive my family everybody
works
everybody’s got kids everybody’s got
something to do and it seemed like every
time I would get sick my family would
have to stop what they were doing and
rearrange their lives just to be able to
be there for the kids or me it’s been
about a month now
no hospital because I only eat what they
give me and so far I’ve been out of the
hospital I have never eaten in excess
fluid I’ve been dropping weight you know
it’s working it works it really works so
[Music]
Candace is just one of the many patients
that we’ve served so far in this study
and I just think it’s really important
to think about what her life is like and
what her life has been like and even
being able to see the difference in how
she looks from having gotten this food
clearly Candace is already really sick
and one of the things we’re also
learning is that food can make a big
difference even earlier along what we
call the prevention treatment continuum
so this is a statistic I learned a
couple weeks ago that is just kind of
blowing my mind
so among Medicaid patients they are 27
percent more likely to go to the
emergency department the last week of
the month can you figure out why they
run out of food and they skip meals and
many of them are diabetic or
pre-diabetic and they end up in the in
the
urgency Department the good news is that
there’s already some work being done to
look at a food insecurity intervention
for that so there’s a lot happening in
the healthcare field around this so back
to those faces and back to Ceres the
truth is that nonprofit organizations
like us will never be able to raise
enough money to feed everyone who needs
it to provide this kind of support in
order to do that we have to change
policy we know from our clients that a
meal prepared with love is one of the
most powerful ways we can show that we
care and and it’s you know delivering a
meal it’s real and it’s tangible and
that’s the easy thing to do policy seems
like something abstract but my
realization is that policy is how we put
our values into action
policy is how we make those meals
available to people like Candice and to
people across the state so the research
is mounting there’s clearly enough data
now to say that this is something that
we should be doing but it’s going to
take all of us raising our voices you
know talk to your you now know about
this so share it with your doctor share
it with your insurance company share it
with your legislators together if we can
raise our voices we can change policies
so that food becomes available to
everyone when they when they need it
most and we can truly reimagine our
health care system thank you so much [Applause]
welcome
I’m excited to talk to you today about
reimagining our health care system but
the story starts for me quite a while
ago I became a vegetarian when I was 16
a really long interest in healthy eating
ate my first organic produce at the Ann
Arbor food co-op in the mid 70s like
some of you I have a dog-eared copy of
Frances Moore Lappe Hayes died for a
small planet on my shelf that I still
use and then in my 40s I started in ran
a home delivered meals service here in
Sonoma County called speranza from 1993
to 2003 and then in 2006 I got a phone
call that changed my life my
horseback-riding teacher called and she
said to me my daughter Megan needs to
get a job over the summer and I want her
to learn how to cook and I want you to
hire her so I had the same reaction you
just did it’s I didn’t have a job
opening for one thing but it’s hard to
hire someone for a cooking job that
doesn’t know how to use a knife that is
a problem but this mom was pretty
persistent and I did have a tendency to
want help and so a couple weeks later I
remembered that a good friend of mine
was helping a family in Sebastopol the
mum was Stage four metastasized breast
cancer and there were a couple of
preteens in the family so I put a small
project together that summer and one
afternoon a week Megan and I got
together and I taught her how to cook
and we made meals for that family and
for two other families that I had found
who were also struggling because of a
health crisis the first day that Megan
and I cooked together the dad in this
family stopped to pick up the meals it
happened to be on his way home from work
and I had never met him either so I
introduced myself and I introduced Megan
and I was just making small talk I
started sharing what we had made for
them and what I know now is in that
family
everyone is terrified and the parent
who’s well has this enormous burden he
was not only working full time he was
also caretaking for his wife and trying
to keep some semblance of normalcy for
the children in that family and as I was
talking you could see the utter relief
in his whole being that someone was even
providing this tiny bit of support for
them and in that moment I glanced over
at Megan and she was about six inches
taller it came and went the moment came
and went but three weeks later I woke up
at 6:30 in the morning with a vision for
what has become series community project
teens just like Megan would come into
the kitchen and learn about cooking and
eating healthy food and the meals they
made would go to families in our
community who were struggling because of
a health crisis just like that family
with the mom who had Stage four
metastasized breast cancer it seems like
such a simple idea so over the last 12
years about 4,000 families have
benefited from our work here and here in
Sonoma County and also Marin and about
3,000 young people have been become part
of the program and what I’ve learned is
that most of the clients that we serve
would never have had healthy food to eat
without us there’s a whole host of
reasons many of them live alone without
a support system they’re too sick to
shop and cook and most of them are poor
and that makes a difference over the
last 12 years I’ve learned a lot about
the difference that healthy food can
make for people like our clients I’m
going to talk about some of the numbers
and while I do I hope you’ll keep these
faces in your mind because these are
about real people 42 million Americans
are food insecure and that includes 13
million children food and security means
that people people don’t have enough to
eat
they don’t have enough good food to eat
and that makes them sick and in fact
it’s costing us 77 billion dollars a
year in unnecessary health care costs
and sixty percent of deaths in the u.s.
now one of the wealthiest countries in
the world are related to poor diets I
mean just stop and think about that I
was talking to someone at my gym
this morning and she said 60% and I said
yes 60% 60% of deaths in the US are
related to poor diets we are simply
eating ourselves sick and the other
thing we’re doing is we’re radically
under investing in food if you think
about school lunch you think about the
older Americans Act do you think about
WIC you think about food stamps we’re
radically under under investing in those
programs and this is what this is what’s
happening now the good news is oh
there’s one other thing that I want to
share the other thing that’s really
interesting is only 10 percent of our
health outcomes are related to what
happens in the doctor’s office or the
treatments that your doctor can
prescribe for you that’s the same amount
as our genetics 30 percent are related
to the choices you and I make every day
it’s good news and the bad news the good
the the choices that we make every day
in our own lives in our day to day lives
but more importantly 40 percent are the
social determinants that limit and
constrain those choices for those 42
million Americans who are food insecure
and many others so that’s pretty
astonishing the good news is there’s a
quiet revolution happening around the
country really looking at challenging
the idea of what health care should pay
for and should prescribe and pay for and
though the field is really being led by
a coalition called the food as medicine
coalition so these are agencies who
provide medically tailored meals to
people who are dealing with serious
illnesses they began during the AIDS
epidemic in the mid 80s and they have 30
to 35 years of experience now providing
meals to that population and series is
really proud to be a member of that
group and over the last five or six
years that group has started to do
significant research studies on the
difference that it makes when people get
get food so it’s not rocket science
right when people have quality food as
part of their treatment they feel better
and they do better and what that means
is they’re less likely to end up in the
emergency department they’re less likely
to
we hospitalized and when they are in the
hospital they’re much more likely to be
discharged to home instead of a skilled
nursing facility and all that saves
money on the healthcare side what we’re
finding is somewhere around 16 to 20
percent net savings in the healthcare
field now we’re taking that research to
the next level here in California and
thanks to the California Legislature
we’ve just been awarded in last year six
million dollars to conduct a three-year
research study with medical patients who
have congestive heart failure so series
and five other agencies across the state
from San Diego all the way up to Sonoma
County are part of that study over the
next three years we’re going to be
providing a thousand medical patients
with 12 weeks of home delivered meals
and four visits with a registered
dietician and we’ll be measuring the
impact of that on their health outcomes
and comparing that to 4,000 similar
patients so unfortunately in order to
change policy we have to show that
there’s cost savings and so it really in
some ways it comes down to the numbers
so remember we said 16 percent net
savings in the studies that have been
done so far here’s just a very
conservative estimate of what this might
mean in California so if we can save
just 5% net savings on the healthcare
cost side when you translate that across
57,000 hospitalizations for heart
disease in California you’re talking
about almost a hundred million dollars a
year in cost savings but like I said
this isn’t about the dollars this is
about real people and I’m really excited
to share a very short video of Candace
and I I want to thank Candace for being
willing to be interviewed that’s a
really hard thing for someone in her
situation to do and I also want to thank
project angel food in LA or colleague
organization who served Candace we don’t
a really tough struggle for my life for
the last five years
I’ve dealt with amputation I’m having
really bad battles with infection
congestive heart failure for me was like
I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t lay down
flat and breathe without feeling like I
was like drowning my legs were extremely
heavy just tired it was very scary
because I didn’t I wasn’t sure what was
going on
basically the doctor told me your heart
is failing and there’s fluid backed up
in your body the first time I was
hospitalized for about seven days for a
while yeah it was weeks at a time and
then I would come home and I would need
in home nurses and things because I
always had like PICC lines I have a lot
of scars you can see from having tubes
inserted here and there and PICC lines
and tunnels and things just trying to
keep myself alive my family everybody
works
everybody’s got kids everybody’s got
something to do and it seemed like every
time I would get sick my family would
have to stop what they were doing and
rearrange their lives just to be able to
be there for the kids or me it’s been
about a month now
no hospital because I only eat what they
give me and so far I’ve been out of the
hospital I have never eaten in excess
fluid I’ve been dropping weight you know
it’s working it works it really works so
[Music]
Candace is just one of the many patients
that we’ve served so far in this study
and I just think it’s really important
to think about what her life is like and
what her life has been like and even
being able to see the difference in how
she looks from having gotten this food
clearly Candace is already really sick
and one of the things we’re also
learning is that food can make a big
difference even earlier along what we
call the prevention treatment continuum
so this is a statistic I learned a
couple weeks ago that is just kind of
blowing my mind
so among Medicaid patients they are 27
percent more likely to go to the
emergency department the last week of
the month can you figure out why they
run out of food and they skip meals and
many of them are diabetic or
pre-diabetic and they end up in the in
the
urgency Department the good news is that
there’s already some work being done to
look at a food insecurity intervention
for that so there’s a lot happening in
the healthcare field around this so back
to those faces and back to Ceres the
truth is that nonprofit organizations
like us will never be able to raise
enough money to feed everyone who needs
it to provide this kind of support in
order to do that we have to change
policy we know from our clients that a
meal prepared with love is one of the
most powerful ways we can show that we
care and and it’s you know delivering a
meal it’s real and it’s tangible and
that’s the easy thing to do policy seems
like something abstract but my
realization is that policy is how we put
our values into action
policy is how we make those meals
available to people like Candice and to
people across the state so the research
is mounting there’s clearly enough data
now to say that this is something that
we should be doing but it’s going to
take all of us raising our voices you
know talk to your you now know about
this so share it with your doctor share
it with your insurance company share it
with your legislators together if we can
raise our voices we can change policies
so that food becomes available to
everyone when they when they need it
most and we can truly reimagine our
health care system thank you so much [Applause]
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