Gary Cohen, Uncommon Hero
HCWH's co-founder Gary Cohen is a recipient of the prestigious Skoll Award. This video, chronicling the evolution of HCWH's work, premiered at the 2009 Skoll World Forum. enlarge video

Tools and Resources

Overview: Healthy Food in Health Care
HCWH Policy Statements
Food Resources by Issue
Purchasing Guides

Overview: Healthy Food in Health Care

Key Documents

HCWH Europe – Better Food, Better Health, Better Environment: The Benefits of Sustainable Food Procurement in Hospitals (pdf)
HCWH Europe – Model Menu for Sustainable Food (pdf)
HCWH Europe – Recipe for Change: 10 "Golden Rules" for Getting More Local and Organic Food onto Hospital Menus (pdf)
HCWH Europe – Fresh, Local and Organic: A Successful Recipe for Improving Europe's Hospital Food (pdf)
More than 220 health care facilities have signed the Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge
Menu of Change, Healthy Food in Health Care: A 2008 Survey of Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge Hospitals (pdf)
Redefining Healthy Food,
a Robert Wood Johnson White Paper (pdf)

Fact Sheets

Food Resources by Issue

Start a conversation about healthy food and consider adopting a food policy

Food and Food Purchasing: A Role for Health Care (pdf)
A Call to Action from the First Annual Conference on Nutrition and Health, a 13-point statement and call to action developed from the March 2004 First Annual Conference on Nutrition and Health sponsored by the University of Arizona College of Medicine's Program in Integrative Medicine and The Rosenthal Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (pdf)
Healthy Food, Healthy Hospitals, Healthy Communities, a May 2005 report by Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Food and Health Program documenting stories of health care leaders bringing fresher, healthier food choices to their patients, staff, and communities (pdf)
Cultivating Common Ground: Linking Health and Sustainable Agriculture, a report by the Prevention Institute (pdf)
Catholic Healthcare West Food and Nutrition Vision Statement (doc)
Healthy and Sustainable Food Policy, a report by the City and County of San Francisco Department of Public Health Sustainable Food Policy, which applies to all County Hospitals (pdf)
Toward a Healthy, Sustainable Food System, an American Public Health Association policy statement
Ripe for Change: Rethinking California's Food Economy (pdf). On the surface, California's food system is a vision of abundance and prosperity. But a closer look reveals a range of serious problems, including degraded ecosystems, obesity alongside hunger, an ailing farm economy, appalling farmworker conditions, and a distribution system that favors trade over local needs. Meanwhile, control of the entire food system, from seed to table, is being centralized within a handful of corporate giants. A new report by the International Society for Ecology and Culture reveals the connections behind these seemingly isolated problems. See the report summary and full report.

Purchase sustainable meat, poultry and seafood

Antibiotic Resistance and the Agricultural Overuse of Antibiotics Fact Sheet (pdf)
Feeding Arsenic to Poultry: Is This Good Medicine? (pdf)
Guide to Poultry Applicable Eco-labels (pdf)
Purchaser's Guide to Sourcing Sustainable Poultry (pdf)
Sample Policy for Purchasing Meat with Reduced Antibiotics (pdf)
Sample Poultry Supplier Survey Questions (pdf)
HCWH's Policy Statement on Antibiotics in Food (pdf)
Keeping Antibiotics Working, an article by Barbara Sattler, RN, originally published in The Maryland Nurse. (pdf)
Keep Antibitotics Working Action
Preserving Antibiotics for the Treatment of Human Disease, an article by Carol Sherman, RD, and John Balbus, MD/MPH, originally published in Innovator (pdf)

Model local, nutritious, sustainable food at conferences, meetings and workshops

Guidelines to Increase the Use of Local Foods at Meetings by the Society for Nutrition Education
A Sense of Place: Serving Local Food at Your Meeting (pdf)

Buy milk produced without recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone

HCWH's statement on Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) (pdf)
A Purchasing Guide to Sourcing Dairy Products Produced Without rBGH (pdf)
Know Your Milk, an eight-page referenced brochure on rBGH by Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility (pdf)
Catholic Healthcare West has signaled its intention to eliminate dairy produced with rBGH in this letter to HCWH (pdf)

Buy local, organic and other certified food

Avoiding Pesky Produce Pesticides, a short article by Julie Redfern, RD of Brigham & Women's Hospital about food production and pesticide use, going organic, and a "Most and Least Contaminated Produce" chart. (pdf)
Transfair Fair Trade Coffee Program
Purchaser's Guide to Sourcing Sustainable Coffee and Tea (pdf)
Saint Louise sips from the fair trade cup, Hollister FreeLance, 8/26/04. In the interests of social justice, California-based Saint Louise Regional Hospital replaced frozen-concentrate coffee in its cafeteria with fresh-brewed stuff that is certified "fair trade."

Become a fast-food free zone

A 2006 report by the American Medical Association performed a survey of fast food in healthcare facilities and found that of the 234 hospitals surveyed, 42 percent were selling brand-name fast food on their campuses. (pdf)
In a 2002 report, researchers at the University of Michigan Health System and Ann Arbor VA Medical Center found 38 percent of the nation's top health institutions had regional or national fast food franchises on their main medical campuses.

Limit use of vending machines and replace unhealthy snacks with healthy choices

Healthy Vending Criteria (pdf)
Hospital Vending Goes Healthy, Auburn Journal, 11/10/05

Host a farmers market or a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) food box program

Farmers' Markets and CSAs on Hospital Grounds (pdf)
Kaiser Permanente's Farmers' Market Resource Guide (pdf)
Produce to the People, a case study of the first-ever farmer's market linked to a hospital. Dr. Preston Maring tells how and why local producers are partnering with the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, CA. (pdf)

Create hospital-supported agriculture and hospital gardens

Catholic Healthcare West hospitals take healthy food goals to high levels with Vegetable and herb gardens on hospital grounds (pdf)
Employees at Fairview Hospital in Western Massachusetts have sponsored an on-site vegetable garden (pdf), (excerpted from Menu of Change) (pdf)

Purchase environmentally preferable food serviceware and improve food waste composting

Choosing Environmentally Preferable Food Service Ware (pdf)
Biobased Food Service Ware and Packaging (pdf)
Fletcher Allen Healthcare (pdf)
Norfolk General Hospital (pdf)

HCWH Policy Statements

Policy Statement on Antibiotics in Food (pdf). Also see our Fact Sheet about Antibiotic Resistance and the Agricultural Overuse of Antibiotics (pdf)
Position Statement on Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) (pdf)
Position Statement on Genetically Engineered Food (pdf)