Connecting the dots between local farms, food, and healthcare to improve community health and food access with the Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities.
The Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities works to protect the environment, strengthen the economy, and build community. As a nonprofit organization based in northwest Lower Michigan, with offices in both Traverse City and Petoskey, we understand collaborating respectfully with citizens and leaders is an effective approach for protecting everything we love about Michigan.
Our local food and farming program anchors in the fact that a strong local food system keeps money local, promotes health and preserves farmland. Since 2002, the food and farming program has grown to become the largest program area within the organization, launching successful initiatives such as Get Farming, Keep Farming, now housed within various community organizations; Taste the Local Difference, a statewide independently owned for-profit local food marketing agency; the statewide Michigan Department of Education program 10 Cents a Meal for Michigan’s Kids & Farms; and groundbreaking work expanding local farm produce options within our rural emergency food systems before, during and after the pandemic.
In 2014, Groundwork launched the Farms, Food and Health (FFH) initiative alongside Munson Healthcare, northwest Michigan’s largest healthcare provider, and Northwest Education Services (previously the Traverse Bay Area Intermediate School District), the regional agency that assists local school districts in providing educational programs and services to a five-county region. Over the past nine years, Groundwork’s FFH initiative has brought key partners together at two conferences (Food, Farms and Health in 2014 and Farms, Food and Health in 2016) and three technical trainings for healthcare providers (FFH Culinary Medicine in 2017, spring 2019, and fall 2019) and the “Dinner with Your Doctor,” Food as Medicine Pilot in partnership with Munson Family Practice Rural Residency program and patients (2021-2022).
Beyond providing a way for a diverse professional audience to connect the dots between healthcare, wellness, and locally grown food, these conferences and trainings have resulted in tangible results for our community, inspiring such initiatives as Munson’s Prescriptions for Produce program, a regional farm to school resource website (farmtoschool.northwested.org/), and the launch of our regional Esperance Community Teaching Kitchen, an initiative helping sustain our FFH culinary medicine continuing professional education for our rural healthcare community.
The 2017 Culinary Medicine keynote speaker, Dr. David Eisenberg, Director of Culinary Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said it clearly: “I’ve dreamt about what you are doing here in this exact city my entire life. You might just be the place that will invent the future for a healthy, resilient community.” To date, we can trace one new clinical nutrition position that has been created in our region, and we hope to increase the number of food and nutrition workforce incubator partnerships with the Grand Traverse Foodshed Alliance and NoBo Mrkt in the Commongrounds Cooperative.
Something magic can happen when new community members from a kaleidoscope of professionals, like farmland preservation champions, chefs, health care providers and food system advocates are all engaged in collective learning on the many ways we can protect farmland through our dietary choices. Our next educational offering, Farms, Food and Health Culinary Medicine, will be September 22nd, 23rd and 24th, 2023 in Traverse City at the Great Lakes Culinary Institute at Northwest Michigan College, with events at both the Sara Hardy Downtown Farmers Market and the new Esperance Community Teaching Kitchen in the Commongrounds Cooperative.
We are dedicated to a future in which community-wide nutrition security is possible, and we join in the vision that a healthful and equitable rural food culture is possible and will be affordable, acceptable and desirable.
With this vision, Groundwork seeks to partner and collaborate on emerging Food as Medicine interventions using a community food system approach. We believe this approach is needed[1] to prevent and manage chronic diseases, provide nutrition education, address food insecurity, and offer holistic patient care.We also see first hand how engaging and joyful collaboration can bring about positive change and even work to reduce provider burnout in healthcare settings. A chef instructor could just feel something special happening at the 2019 Farms, Food and Health Culinary Medicine Training sharing, “One of my lasting impressions is just how enthusiastic the attendees were in the kitchen—there’s something about handling and preparing food in a social setting. They worked briskly, but they seemed to have fun, too.”
Over the next five years, we will be joining the National Teaching Kitchen Collaborative to support our regional partners in exploring community-based research opportunities within the Esperance Community Teaching Kitchen. Interdisciplinary and cross-sectional collaborations are a good way to advance pilot projects, effectively use and conserve resources, and expand work-flow capacities. In 2024, we hope to gather again at Farms, Food and Health to hear from the community and invite new partnerships into this work. It’s a good time to get involved! Learn more at groundworkcenter.org.
[1] Needs have emerged from several sources. 1. According to the MiThrive Community Strengths and Needs Assessments, 25.8% (n=194) of regional healthcare providers identified access to nutritious food as a top factor for a thriving community. (#5 out of 15 factors.) 19.4% (n=996) of NW residents identified access to nutritious food as a top factor for a thriving community. (#6 out of 15 factors.) 2. Access to health care was ranked #2 out of the top 15 reasons for our rates of chronic disease according to the MiThrive, provider survey, (n=195). 3. Combating food insecurity emerged as a theme in the pulse survey series from the Northwest Community Health Innovation Region (CHIR) data briefs when clients/patients were asked to identify ways in which their community could ensure everyone has a chance at living the healthiest life possible. CM provides individuals and families with skills to prepare healthy meals using affordable and accessible ingredients. Results from our Dinner with Your Doctor pilot demonstrated successes like improvements in participants’ blood pressure. 4. Provider education/Nutrition education is often overlooked in medical training, and to date we’ve only reached a small fraction of our healthcare providers to increase their limited knowledge and skills to provide effective nutrition counseling. Operating through the lens of our regional food systems, this innovative approach brings forward the unique social determinants of health that providers see in our rural healthcare clinics so they can be better prepared to address them. 5. Additionally in May 2022, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution to set a goal of preparing health professionals to consider food and nutrition as ways to prevent/treat chronic conditions. Our efforts to increase regional health practitioners’ competencies with local food, cooking, and nutrition counseling fit into the strategies outlined in the 2022 Biden-Harris National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.