Promoting Nutrition Security and Chronic Disease Management Through a Produce Prescription Program

Cooking skills session will be offered by the Delicious Legacy Program. The Delicious Legacy program is a culturally tailored, community-based nutrition and wellness intervention designed to promote health equity. Rooted in the intergenerational transmission of knowledge, the program emphasizes family socialization practices related to food, health beliefs, and caregiving. It integrates evidence-based nutritional education with ancestral foodways to address diet-related chronic illnesses while fostering cultural pride and resilience. Through interactive workshops, individuals engage in hands-on learning that reinforces traditional roles in food preparation and shared meals as sites of emotional support and identity formation. Dr. Haynes will lead the cooking sessions and create cardiometabolic-appropriate recipes.

The standard PPP includes three major parts. 1) Screening and personalized referrals/support for social needs including food, housing, health insurance and transportation by a community health worker. 2) Bi-weekly wellness visits with an MHWP team of interprofessional healthcare students, supervised by a clinical faculty, and guided by the participants' health and social needs and interests. They include education and SMART-EST goals around nutrition, physical activities, chronic disease management, care coordination, and/or recipes. 3) Delivery of a bag of fresh fruits and vegetables as well as heart healthy food items every two weeks over a period of 12 months. The produce bags will be made by the Underground Kitchen, a local non-profit organization creating curated bags of healthy food items and recipes to support the prevention and management of chronic diseases.