This letter appears in HealthBegins’ June 2026 newsletter.
“Food should not be an optional social service; it should be an integral part of the continuum of care.”
That was the clear call from Delaware Lt. Governor Kyle Evans Gay, presenting a vision for state investment in Food Is Medicine (FIM) at last week’s FIMCON in Washington, D.C.
Those three last words — continuum of care — were for me an essential message of the conference and the broader moment in FIM. Food interventions for health often operate as one-size-fits-all services, such as a produce prescription or food delivery program. But now, as FIM matures and gains momentum, it’s clear that it must operate on a continuum of care, delivering impact for both prevention and treatment.
To see what I mean, look at Tufts University’s Food Is Medicine pyramid. It shows how interventions of varying intensities, from population-based food policies to individual medically tailored meals, address a range of needs from prevention to treatment.
Seeing food supports this way resolves the false dichotomy that sometimes splinters efforts to improve health through nutrition. Some voices in the field insist that FIM is entirely separate from food insecurity interventions. In fact, all such efforts work on the same spectrum with a common goal. Increasing access to nutritious foods is a healthcare strategy to improve diet-related diseases — whether achieved through federal programs like SNAP and WIC to prevent the chronic diseases that disproportionately affect low-income communities OR through individualized interventions like medically tailored meals to treat specific medical conditions.
In other words: Improved nutrition is a critical tool to improve health; the method to support it simply depends on a given person’s needs at a given time.
How can healthcare and its community partners operationalize a FIM continuum of care? In a recent webinar, HealthBegins and partners presented a new step-down model to help clinicians and FIM providers tailor the intervention and investment to the patient’s needs over time — supporting more effective care and improved long-term outcomes.
The step-down approach matches the treatment levels of the FIM pyramid to acute needs while incorporating more touchpoints to connect patients with longer-term food insecurity resources, like SNAP/WIC, for lasting prevention. Healthcare partners can also leverage their influence to advocate for stronger public policies and food insecurity programs to strengthen the pyramid’s prevention levels. The restoration of SNAP benefits slashed by Congress last summer is an urgent place to start.
At FIMCON I felt a surge of momentum and opportunity. In a divided nation, FIM is a rare bipartisan priority — which means we can and must seize the moment to advance its reach and impact. As Lt. Gov. Gay said, nutritious food is not an optional extra in healthcare. If we build it into our standard of care now — and tailor services along the continuum of needs — we can impact health for current patients and future generations.
Best,
Maddy
