Nourish Infographic: Opportunities for Food in Health Care

Source: Nourish
Year: 2018
Nourish and its collaborators have launched new infographic, The Opportunities for Food in Health Care, to illustrate how food choices can enhance the patient experience, support organizational results and efficiencies, and contribute to community wellbeing.

Webinar: Systems mapping

Source: Nourish
Year: 2017
Presenters: Melanie Goodchild, Turtle Island Institute; Jen Reynolds, Food Secure Canada; Hayley Lapalme, Nourish; Beth Hunter, McConnell Foundation

This discussion-based webinar will explore the potential of systems mapping as a tool to understand systems and to design better interventions. We will introduce the basics of beginning to draw your own systems maps. The Nourish team will share the maps drawn to interpret the (dis)connection between food and health/care, and will explore the insights and opportunities that emerged from those maps. Participants will be invited to respond to the maps and discuss patterns they observe in their work.

For some background, Donella Meadows' Thinking in Systems: A Primer is a wonderful resource - and we just discovered, is available online! If you want to cut to the chase, Chapter 6: Leverage Points (p.145) packs a good punch and is one of the most practical chapters.

Learning Objectives

  • Discuss the potential of systems mapping as a tool to understand systems and to design better interventions.

  • Introduce some basic concepts of systems thinking and systems mapping. (Note: Done well, systems mapping is hard! This will be an introduction.)

  • Apply the concepts of mapping to an existing map produced by the Nourish team.

  • Encourage participants to engage with the maps by sharing insights, surfacing assumptions, and contributing new interpretations.

Wasan Report 2017: Food is fundamental to health and healing

For four days from Thursday, September 7th to Sunday, September 10, 19 leaders from across healthcare, government and food sectors convened together on Wasan Island in order to explore the role of food in healthcare in Canada. The core belief of the group was that food is fundamental to health and healing, but is currently undervalued within the healthcare system. Through systems mapping, the group explored the dynamics of the current healthcare system and prototyped actionable opportunities for a future of food in health care that nourishes patients, communities and the environment.

Read the summary report here.

Webinar: Innovator Collaborative Projects Public Kickoff

Source: Nourish
Year: 2017
Are you interested by the role that better food can play in delivering better health care? The Nourish leadership program has kicked off 5 collaborative projects and is looking for your engagement.

Each team approaches a different dimension of the disconnect between food in health care, for example: better understanding the patient experience of food in health, and addressing barriers to sustainable, local, and traditional food that supports health and healing. Specifically, their work relates to:

  • Increasing the sector's ability to deliver Traditional & Country Food Programs for Indigenous patients and residents

  • Developing a Sustainable Menu Guide to help the sector decrease its ecological impact and support social and economic wellbeing

  • Creating a more enabling policy environment for a Food is Health approach in health care

  • Developing National RFP Models for values-based healthcare food purchasing

  • Researching strategies for benchmarking National Patient Satisfaction/Experience with Food Services

We invite you to join the Nourish cohort to learn about the suite of national, collaborative projects they have been developing to transform how we think about food in care. During the webinar, each project team defines the problem they are tackling and how they plan to approach it. Participants are invited to respond to a call to action to engage with the projects.

Room Service Improves Nutritional Intake and Increases Patient Satisfaction While Decreasing Food Waste and Cost.

Source: Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
Year: 2017
A comprehensive evaluation of a room service model at an Australian acute care facility showed results of increased energy and protein intake, decreased food waste to 12% and meal costs by 15%, and increased patient satisfaction.

Plow to Plate: The Community Hospital as Change Agent

Source: New Milford Hospital, Connecticut
Year: 2012
Plow to Plate is a program that advocates healthy food as a direct path to disease prevention while promoting the local agricultural economy. It delivers a fully integrated, healthful food service program to patients, staff and the community, using fresh produce from local farms and shows results with increased patient satisfaction scores.

Hospital Food - An opinion piece

Source: Flavour Journal
Year: 2017
This opinion piece takes a critical look at the current state of hospital food, with a focus on the UK’s National Health Service, and explores how findings from studies of high-end gastrophysics research could help to improve it. For example, ‘Eye appeal really is half the meal’, even in hospital. A number of concrete recommendations and low-cost solutions are proposed.

Best practices for Nutrition, Food Services and Dining in Long-Term Care Homes.

Source: Ontario Long Term Care Action Group, Dietitians of Canada
Year: 2013

A working paper exploring how to implement quality nutrition, hydration and pleasurable dining in order to enhance the quality of life, and care, for residents in long-term care.

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"Hunger was never absent": How residential school diets shaped current patterns of diabetes among Indigenous peoples in Canada

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Source: Mosby, I. & Galloway, T. CMAJ 2017 August 14;189:E1043-5. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.170448
Year: 2017

One of the most consistent themes in testimony provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was the common experience of hunger at residential schools. In his statement to the TRC, survivor Andrew Paul spoke of the unrelenting hunger he experienced during his time at Aklavik Roman Catholic Residential School: “We cried to have something good to eat before we sleep. A lot of the times the food we had was rancid, full of maggots, stink. Sometimes we would sneak away from school to go visit our aunts or uncles, just to have a piece of bannock."

St Michael's Hospital - Training Manual, Recipe Book and Procurement Guide

Source: St Michael's Hospital, Toronto
Year: 2016

George Brown College's Hospitality and Culinary Arts program partnered with St. Michael's Hospital to create an easy-to-use guide for kitchen staff at St. Michael's to learn how, where and when of local food purchasing and preparation. A suite of recipes is included that are locally-sourced and nutritious, including nutritional label for each to simplify a hospital dietitian's work.

Local Food and Ontario's Long-Term Care Sector

Source: Greenbelt Fund
Year: 2015

This report documents the current state of local food usage in Ontario's long-term care sector. The sector offers a significant market for local producers as the estimated annual raw food spend of $210 million, however the 600+ homes do not track local food usage and face barriers in adding local food items to their menus.

Setting the Table for a Healthy Food Conversation: Tips for care providers working within Aboriginal Communities

Source: Island Health
Year: 2014

A brief guide produced by Island Health, British Columbia on supporting culturally safe conversations about food and nutrition with Aboriginal communities.

Webinar: Hospitals and Long Term Care Facilities as Anchor Institutions

Webinar: Hospitals and Long Term Care Facilities as Anchor Institutions

Source: Nourish
Year: 2017
How can hospitals and long-term care (LTC) homes build the health and wealth of their patients, staff, and communities through the food they source and serve? This webinar explores American and Canadian examples of leadership to position institutions as anchors of wellbeing for the populations they serve. 

Webinar: Traditional Foods and Reconciliation

Source: Nourish
Year: 2017

How does reconciliation fit into the work of strengthening the connection between food, culture, and health? This webinar hears from Indigenous leaders and leaders delivering traditional food programs with and for First Nation communities.

Presenters:
Jenny Cross, Traditional Haida Knowledge Keeper
Kelly Gordon, Six Nations Health Services
Kathy Loon, Meno Ya Win Health Centre
Leslie Carson, Yukon Hospital
Laura Salmon, Yukon Hospital
Shelly Crack, Haida Gwaii Hospital and Health Centre


Learning Objectives:

  • Hear from elders and community leaders to explore the relationship between the work of reconciliation and the work to strengthen the connection between food, culture, and health.

  • Begin to explore traditional food programs in healthcare through work in Haida Gwaii, Six Nations, Whitehorse, and Sioux Lookout.

  • Invite more healthcare and foodservice practitioners into the work and conversation around reconnecting food, culture, and health, to advance the work of reconciliation.

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