Food can be nourishment, but it is also family, tradition and joy. Michelle Axe opened the Advancing Healthy Lifestyles Bite-Sized Bits webinar by asking participants what food meant to them. Their answers were a reminder that any effort to improve health through food has to begin with the person eating it.

Axe, who leads the Food Is Medicine initiative at ChristianaCare, shared how her team connects clinical care with nutritious food, education and community partnerships. The central idea is straightforward: the right food support can help people manage a health condition—but only if it fits their lives.

What does “food is medicine” mean?

Food is medicine refers to providing healthy foods to help prevent, manage or treat specific health conditions as part of healthcare. Axe distinguished it from broader food-access work: a food is medicine intervention is tied to a clinical need and referral, while food-access programs address the need for food whether or not someone has a diagnosis. Both matter.

These interventions can take different forms:

• Produce prescriptions help people obtain fruits and vegetables, such as through vouchers or farmers’ markets.

• Medically tailored groceries provide ingredients selected with a health condition in mind.

• Medically tailored meals arrive prepared for people who need more support, including some who cannot cook for themselves.

ChristianaCare pairs food support with options such as registered dietitian services, health coaching and culinary medicine. Patients may want different levels of guidance, and those needs can change over time.

The right support can change over time

A person may be ready to cook with medically tailored groceries today but need prepared meals after a hospitalization. Later, as they recover, groceries or a produce prescription may be a better fit. Axe described this as finding the right program for the right person at the right time.

That takes more than a diagnosis. ChristianaCare also considers a patient’s ability to prepare food, social circumstances, preferences and interest in making dietary changes. Someone who is not ready for intensive coaching can still receive food-access support and an invitation to a community cooking class.

Food has to work for the whole household

Axe emphasized that ChristianaCare’s food is medicine programs provide food for participants and their families, with amounts adjusted for household size. That matters when a parent might otherwise give their food to a child rather than eat it themselves.

It also matters which foods are offered. Axe described seeking feedback from Hispanic patients about ingredients, spices, equipment and brands that would make grocery packages more useful and familiar. The team continues to gather input through health coaches and community health workers, with plans for more structured patient feedback.

Her point was clear: nutritious food cannot make a difference if people do not want—or are unable—to eat it.

Partnerships make the model possible

Healthcare teams cannot do this work alone. Axe highlighted collaborations among clinicians, dietitians, health coaches, food banks, community organizations, farmers and food providers. She also described work to expand opportunities for local farmers and bring culinary medicine activities to more Delaware communities.

Those partnerships help connect the pieces: identifying a patient’s needs, supplying appropriate food, building cooking skills and supporting healthier habits after a program ends. ChristianaCare’s health coaches, for example, can work with participants on shopping within a food budget so they can continue using what they learned.

Learning—and improving—as programs grow

Axe shared encouraging outcomes from ChristianaCare’s evaluations, including improvements in measures related to maternal health and chronic disease management. She also stressed that collecting data is not just about demonstrating impact to funders. It helps the team see what to change, from menus to coaching and patient engagement.

Food is medicine is more than a box of groceries or a prepared meal. As this webinar showed, it is an approach that brings clinical care and community knowledge together—while remembering that food should support health and remain a source of connection and joy.

This post is based on the Advancing Healthy Lifestyles Bite-Sized Bits webinar featuring Michelle Axe of ChristianaCare.