The story of the Sambhavna Clinic, a non-profit holistic health clinic in Bhopal, India, built to treat those injured by the Union Carbide toxic gas release in 1984. enlarge video
Food Matters Pilot Trainings: Clinical Education and Advocacy Program
What Clinicians Need to Know About Our Food System to Help Ensure Healthy Pregnancies, Healthy Families and Healthy Future Generations
Overview
The healthcare sector bears the burden of treating diseases associated with a broken food system. Now is the time for healthcare professionals to come together to create a healthier and more sustainable food system to feed our families and help reduce the burden of chronic disease
Food matters because what we eat profoundly impacts the health of individuals, communities, and the environment. Among the members of the U.S. population, exposure to energy-dense, nutritionally-depleted, chemical-laden, and environmentally-destructive food is ubiquitous. Obesity, diabetes, malnutrition, childhood cancer and other chronic diseases are the costly consequences of these exposures, both in terms of human well-being and healthcare expenditures. A complex industrialized food system underlies this state of nutritional affairs.
The Food Matters program is a comprehensive package to encourage hospitals and healthcare professionals to become leaders and advocates for a food system that promotes public and environmental health.
The program includes:
- CME-accredited trainings that explore the health and environmental implications of our industrialized food system from production to consumption, and linkages to chronic disease and the obesity epidemic. Programs will review current science around environmental exposures within our food system, and the impacts of these exposures on pediatric, reproductive, and ecological health. Topics will include: pesticides, antibiotics, Bisphenol A (BPA), arsenic, and more.
- Advocacy training to equip healthcare providers with the skills and information to lend their powerful voices to crucial food and health policy debates.
- An innovative package of educational materials for patients and their families.
The Food Matters trainings are being piloted in select locations, with anticipated national expansion. Please contact us for more information on participating in the programs.
Michelle Gottlieb
Food Matters Co-Coordinator
Co-Coordinator, Healthy Food in Healthcare Program
Health Care Without Harm
617-216-5658
Lucia Sayre
Food Matters Co-Coordinator
Co-Executive Director, San Francisco Bay Area Physicians for Social Responsibility
Co-Coordinator, Healthy Food in Healthcare Program
Health Care Without Harm
510-559-8777
Locations of Pilot Trainings
The following cities have been identified for pilot testing of the Food Matters project in 2011:
- Oakland, CA - March 5, 2011
- Boston, MA - May 14, 2011
- Philadelphia, PA - June 11, 2011
- Grand Rapids, MI - November 12, 2011
- Portland, OR - December 2, 2011
Advisory Team
The Food Matters project is guided by a clinical advisory group of maternal and child health experts from around the country. This group meets quarterly to advise the development of the Food Matters training materials, patient resources and clinical advocacy program. Members of the Food Matters Clinical Advisory Team are:
- Judy Focareta, RN, Magee Women's Hospital
- Joel Forman, MD, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
- Sarah Janssen, MD, PhD, MPH, University of California San Francisco Medical Center and Natural Resources Defense Council
- Preston Maring, MD, Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center
- Joanne Perron, MD, Program on Reproductive Health and Environment, University of California San Francisco Medical Center
- Ted Schettler, MD, MPH, Science and Environmental Health Network
- Naomi Stotland, MD, University of California San Francisco Medical Center
- David Wallinga, MD, MPA, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The Food Matters program is a partner in the (FASTEP) Alliance - From Advancing Science to Ensuring Prevention - in the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. The FASTEP Alliance is an innovative and diverse alliance of partners spanning the fields of reproductive, environmental, occupational, and pediatric health, and toxicology. The goal of FASTEP is to secure each and everyone's right to optimal reproductive health by fostering environments that prevent exposure to potential reproductive toxicants and provide the nutritive and social sustenance necessary for healthy pregnancies, children, adults, and future generations. FASTEP serves as a key mechanism for collaborative outreach and education to clinicians, health care institutions and patients regarding the effects of environmental exposures on reproductive health.
Food Matters Resources
- Food Matters 2011 calendar, A Year of Healthy Eating (pdf)
- Food Matters: An Ecological Framework (pdf)
- The Reproductive Health Impacts of Our Industrialized Food System (pdf)
- Call to Action: An Advocacy Agenda for Food Matters (pdf)
- Agenda from Oakland Training (pdf)
- Resources from Oakland Training (pdf)
- Citations List from Oakland Training (pdf)
- Food Matters video [coming soon]
- Food Matters white paper [coming soon]
