Food as Medicine: Addressing Food Insecurity

At Children’s Hospital Colorado, our philosophy is that nutrition is a vital element of medical care. We've developed a multifaceted Food as Medicine initiative to help ensure that all children and families have access to affordable and nutritious foods for optimal health and well-being.

Food, healthcare costs and health outcomes

A growing body of research demonstrates inextricable links between food security and health outcomes, hunger and healthcare costs.

• According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Children who live in households that are food insecure…are likely to be sick more often, recover from illness more slowly and be hospitalized more frequently. Lack of adequate healthy food can impair a child’s ability to concentrate and perform well in school and is linked to higher levels of behavioral and emotional problems from preschool through adolescence.”
• In its 2021 publication, “Food Is Medicine: Final Project Report,” Feeding America noted that food insecurity has been linked to more than $77 billion in additional healthcare expenditures each year in the U.S.

Limited access to nutritious food is driven by many factors, including the inability to afford nutritious food, lack of availability of nutritious food and cultural differences that are not in line with typical American processed foods. Limited access to nutritious food can harm vital health, growth and developmental factors that start in childhood and compound over time.

Our approach

Through our innovative Resource Connect initiative, we provide nutrition education with a hands-on, confidence building approach along with carefully curated food selection based on individual needs.  We also provide guidance on:  

• Core components of healthy eating, active living
• Meal planning and portion control
• Shopping, budgeting and recipe modification  
• Food storage and preparation practices 

Healthy Roots Food Clinic

The Healthy Roots Food Clinic was created in 2019 and is based on the principle of Food as Medicine and the belief that hunger is a health issue. Here, families can stock up on healthy and nutritious foods at no cost, including fresh produce — some of which is grown in the hospital’s Healthy Roots Garden. The clinic also provides guidance on community resources and nutrition advice, safe food education and cooking lessons to patient-families.

In 2021-22, the Healthy Roots Food Clinic received nearly 1,800 referrals from primary care clinics in our Health Pavilion and served more than 12,000 people. One hundred percent of visits were “successful,” meaning that all families who sought food were provided nutritious groceries and basic food education.

We are taking steps toward full integration with our electronic medical record system. This is a crucial step in integrating our Healthy Food Roots Clinic into a clinical model that operationalizes the Food as Medicine initiative. Over the next several years, Children’s Colorado’s Food as Medicine initiative aims to evolve to a more holistic and integrated model by progressing from simple food practices (i.e., food distribution) to nutrition planning to improved health outcomes. 

Healthy Roots Garden

We opened the Healthy Roots Garden on our Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora in the summer of 2018. The 3,000-square-foot garden grew more than 1,200 pounds of fruits and vegetables in 2023, including 30-plus varieties of fruits and vegetables. The garden is maintained by a full-time urban gardener and volunteers, and the produce is distributed to families through our Healthy Roots Food Clinic.

Healthy Roots Mobile

During the pandemic response, we shifted our on-site services to a mobile distribution model with our partner school district, Aurora Public Schools (APS). This community partnership continues.

In 2021, Resource Connect launched a pilot of the Healthy Roots Food Clinic in Crawford Elementary in the Aurora Public Schools (APS) District. The students in these schools come from 50+ different countries, speak over 150 languages, and 82% qualify for Free or Reduced Lunch. More than 3,400 APS student households were reached through these efforts, serving more than 10,000 unique individuals. The robust nature of this partnership extends our reach into the community.