FARM Rx: Combating food insecurity and diet-related illnesses – Red and Black

FARM Rx, a prescription food program created by Wholesome Wave Georgia in partnership with the Athens Farmers Market, received a $300,000 grant from UnitedHealthcare. This grant allowed for more staff including a full-time director and two spanish speaking team members, increased the program length from six to eight months, and additional cooking programs, according to a press release.

According to Abigail Darwin, Food for Health Program Manager at Wholesome Wave Georgia, The Athens Farmers Market was invited to apply for the grant because it has a presence in different areas across Georgia, and the program, which started in 2017, showed the most promise for growth.

“I feel really passionate about this work,” Darwin said. “The UnitedHealthcare funds have really allowed us to mobilize [growth].”

The program was started in 2015 at Wholesome Wave Georgia, which supports multiple sites across the state and Athens is one of them.

FARM Rx aims to address the root cause of diet-related illnesses that are common in low-income communities: food insecurity. FARM Rx supplies families with fresh produce to promote healthier lifestyles. Since the program’s creation, it has helped 1,359 food insecure households as of 2022.

“I think that food is medicine and it is part of the solution to the chronic disease epidemic that our country is facing,” Darwin said.

The newly expanded staff helps support the face-to-face work of the program, which includes helping with SNAP enrollment, greeting participants and checking in on them. Additionally, the Spanish speaking team members are able to engage with Spanish speaking participants, which make up 25% of this year’s program, according to Rexie McFarlin, a graduate of the program and current volunteer.

In addition to FARM Rx, Wholesome Wave Georgia also doubles SNAP dollars at the market to further provide access to fresh produce. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and it is an effort by the USDA to provide food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget, so that they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being, according to the USDA website.

“We’re giving full households… access to fresh, healthy, locally grown foods, because we believe that mealtime is a shared experience and you can promote lifestyle change within one person in the household and not include everybody else,” Darwin said.

FARM Rx is in partnership with the Athens Farmers Market. The market takes place year-round at Bishop Park on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon and March to Nov. at Creature Comforts on Wednesdays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

“[The Athens Farmers Market] serves as our church,” Darwin said.“It serves as our gathering space, our place to see friends, our place to connect with local artists and local farmers, to share recipes with strangers.”

Every week, the free program provides a dollar a day per family member or $14 per week for single households to spend on fresh, locally grown food at the Athens Farmers Market. Participants receive this for eight months from April to Nov.

In order to qualify, participants must be an adult, food insecure and have a diet related illness, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. The participants also need to be able to shop at the market once a week and attend one of their weekly cooking and nutrition classes. If needed, the program pays for rideshare services for participants.

“Knowledge empowers people to not only take control of their own lives and their lifestyles, but to make those difficult changes,” Darwin said.

McFarlin had only ever tried fried okra before attending one of the program’s nutrition classes. During one of these classes, the cook made a stew with okra and it changed his perspective on the vegetable.

“It was the best way I’ve ever tried okra. I haven’t even had fried okra since then,” McFarlin said. “I got to try a lot of things [through the program that] I normally wouldn’t have even tried.”

The goal of the program is to promote long term healthy eating with fresh produce in addition to lifestyle changes to address the root cause of chronic diseases, but for McFarlin, it became even more.

He is now working as a peer champion for the program where he calls participants to remind them about the market and classes and helps guide them through the program. The program not only helped McFarlin eat more vegetables, but also inspired him to pursue an online horticulture degree at Oregon State University’s Ecampus

“I’ve always wanted to help people, but didn’t know what to do,” McFarlin said. “This just feels right.”

Darwin said that this year’s program is helping a 100 households in Athens and 100 in Augusta, which is an increase from last year’s numbers of 60 households in Athens, 60 in Augusta and 30 in Atlanta. In Athens, 367 people are receiving fresh produce every week.

“We have some really exciting work on the horizon that we’re working to establish more sites across the state so that Georgians everywhere can take advantage of this program,” Darwin said.