FARMINGTON, Maine — Hannaford donated $350,000 to MaineHealth in support of its Food as Medicine program. The new initiative which kicked off in June increases access to nutritious food for under-resourced individuals in Franklin County with chronic health conditions.
Food as Medicine is a program recently launched by MaineHealth at Franklin Community Health Network, which includes Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington.
It's a one-year pilot program that supports Franklin County residents with chronic illnesses who have limited access to healthy food and have a MaineHealth primary care provider.
LeeAnne Lavoie, director of the Healthy Community Coalition of Greater Franklin County, said this program is supporting a community where there is a great need for it.
"We are one of the most rural counties in Maine and just getting access to healthy foods is one of the biggest challenges we have," Lavoie said.
Lavoie said along with the challenge of food insecurity is high rates of chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.
"The combination of food insecurity and chronic diseases is a really deadly combination," Dr. Dora Anne Mills, chief health improvement officer at MaineHealth, said.
Dr. Mills said the program provides MaineHealth patients access to healthy foods, hands-on cooking classes, and peer support.
The program runs out of MaineHealth Food Pantry which is a short distance from Franklin Memorial Hospital. The food pantry will soon move to a new, bigger pantry on hospital grounds and is set to open later this month.
The program benefits patients like Anne Glazier, who has a gastrointestinal disease. Glazier said her dietician at MaineHealth referred her to this program to learn about how to eat and cook for her specific dietary needs.
"Learning how to cook according to my food needs, my more or less complicated diet, the FODMAP diet, has been really beneficial," Glazier said.
Dr. Mills said the money for this program will also be used for a healthy meal delivery program for Mainers recently discharged from Franklin Memorial Hospital with certain heart disease diagnoses. It will additionally be used for research to determine how well the program works.
"We believe that the data from this will show that this program is going to improve their health dramatically in the long run," Dr. Mills said.
Hannaford's donation is part of it's "Eat Well, Be Well - A Path to Better Health" initiative. The company committed to donate $1.5 million to support healthy meal programs in New England and New York.