More than 47 million Americans lack regular access to enough food for an active and healthy life. Lacking access to nutritious food has been shown to lead to poor health, including higher rates of chronic disease.

The rates are even higher among people with low incomes, people of color, and people living in rural communities. Even individuals who have enough to eat may not have consistent, affordable access to healthy food.

How we support food and nutrition security

At Kaiser Permanente, we’ve committed to providing $50 million by 2030 to support programs that increase food and nutrition security and improve health outcomes for the country’s most vulnerable populations.

We work with community organizations, local food providers, and care teams to help our members and people in our communities get the nutrition they need to be healthy.

Advancing Food Is Medicine

Food Is Medicine is a national movement to use healthy food as a tool to treat and prevent diseases.

For decades, Kaiser Permanente has been a leader in pioneering policies that help prevent and manage obesity and other ongoing conditions, and improve community health, and. Food Is Medicine nationwide.

Our Food Is Medicine Center of Excellence helps develop and design programs, train care teams, and connect with community groups and local organizations.

Our Food Is Medicine programs include:

• Screening and referrals
• Medically tailored meals
• Produce and grocery programs
• Community partnerships

Our food and nutrition security policy priorities

Our policy work is guided by our belief that access to nutritious food plays a critical role in supporting whole-person health.

To ensure communities have reliable access to healthy food, Kaiser Permanente supports policies that:

• Minimize barriers to and maximize enrollment in federal nutrition assistance programs, such as SNAP and WIC
• Support research, analysis, and education efforts to ensure SNAP sustainability and increased coordination between state and federal agencies
• Support healthy food procurement in our cities and counties, such as our collaboration with CityHealth to help local leaders develop policies that make healthy food and beverage options available in city-owned or controlled places such as parks, sports arenas, city buildings, airports, and public hospitals
• Support federal nutrition standards for school meals, and educate policymakers on the importance of adding goals to the SNAP program that provide nutrition security and combat diet-related chronic illness

We work to remove barriers to food access

Kaiser Permanente opposes policy proposals that create barriers to enrollment in the SNAP program and other food and nutrition assistance benefits, as this harms vulnerable individuals and families.