Nutrition in Healthcare Resources

Sustainable Food Purchasing & Menu Items

  • 2017 Menu of Change Report: 6 trends and stories behind them that illustrate how health care is transforming communities and markets through local and sustainable food initiatives.
  • Balanced Menus: a Pilot Evaluation of Implementation in Four San Francisco Bay Area Hospitals: Balanced Menus is a voluntary program that seeks to improve nutrition and benefit the environment by reducing meat purchasing among participating hospitals by 20 percent within 12 months while also shifting towards serving more sustainable produced meat.
  • Healthier Hospitals Agenda:The Healthier Hospitals Initiative, a coalition of leading health systems and organizations committed to improving sustainability and safety across the health care sector, has created the Healthier Hospitals Agenda to chart a path to a healthier, more sustainable and more cost-effective health care system.
  • Health Care Procurement Guide: Helps facilities develop purchasing plans and overcome barriers to identifying and accessing sustainably-raised / grown products. 
  • ProCureWorks: This Health Care Without Harm initiative leverages the combined purchasing power of five California school districts and hospitals to create healtheir food choice for the well being of children, patients, staff, and families. 
  • Redefining Protein Report and Purchasing Considerations: A guide for applying an Environmental Nutrition Approach to food purchases, especially when reducing meat from the plate. 
  • Sustainable Management of Food: Links and Resources about food recovery in the San Diego Area. Topics include: source reduction, donations, feed animals, industrial uses, composting, and successes. 

Healthy Food Promotion & Tracking

  • Healthy Connections Recipe & Nutrition Videos:The Center for Healthier Communities and the Food and Nutrition Services Department at Rady Children’s Hospital created quick and lively nutrition education videos that demonstrate how to prepare simple healthful meals.
  • The 2019 NHLT Cookbook Calendar: The 2019 Nutrition in Healthcare Leadership Team (NHLT) Cookbook Calendar is a collaborative project featuring healthy recipes served on patient and/or cafeteria menus at San Diego County hospitals and healthcare facilities.

Business Practices 

  • Encouraging Healthier Choices in Hospitals: This 2014 report from Health Care Without Harm and the Center for Science in the Public Interest examines SSB-reduction strategies in 11 hospitals around the nation, including San Diego County’s Rady Children’s Hospital, which has significantly decreased SSB consumption even while it has boosted beverage sales revenue.
  • Emerging Local Food Purchasing Initiatives in Northern California Hospitals: This report from the Agricultural Sustainability Institute through UC Davis presents a cross-section of current farm-to-hospital initiatives in the region, in order to demonstrate what has been accomplished in Northern California hospitals and how. 
  • Food Matters: Clinicians Address an Industrialized Food System Gone Awry: Healthcare clinicians play a vital role in educating their patients, community and institutions. Clinicians are recognized as trusted experts on health-related issues, not only in the clinic, but in society as well. 
  • Food Matters: Hospitals Serving Up a Menu of Change: Health care facilities across the continent are recognizing that the food system – how our food is produced and distributed – is misaligned with dietary guidelines, and is largely reliant on methods of production and distribution that harm public and environmental health.
  • The California Food as Medicine Webinar: The webinar was hosted by Community Health Improvement Partners (CHIP) and Health Care Without Harm, and featured speakers across California who are implementing new initiatives centered on food, and share best practices towards shaping better patient meals.
  • The California Food Is Medicine Coalition: This California based coalition of Medically Tailored Meal Intervention service provides a Medi-Cal medically Tailored Meals fact sheet, as well as research that food is truly medicine.