Values-Based Procurement of Food in Health Care: A Primer for Anchor Institutions to Harness their Buying Power for the Health of Patients, People, and Planet
Every health care food purchase has an economic, environmental, and social impact, whether intended or not. Health care food purchasers can build the health of their patients and the planet through the food they buy. The Values-Based Procurement (VBP) Primer is a tool to support health care food service and procurement teams to do so, by planning for and creating positive contributions to the health of patients, their organization, and the planet. It is one of the offerings of Nourish’s climate leadership “Planetary Health Menus” program. The primer outlines the context of why Values-Based Procurement is relevant in today’s food system and shares a vision of an improved future state. It walks the reader through a readiness scan, baseline information gathering, and goal setting. The primer ends with feasible next steps and links to supportive resources. It was created through a literature review, key interviews, and integrated feedback from potential users, by a group of dedicated values-based procurement practitioners in the Nourish community.
On April 4, 2023, over 100 people from coast-to-coast-to coast gathered for the launch of our new Values-Based Procurement of Food in Health Care primer. The webinar featured four co-authors Hayley Lapalme, Wendy Smith, Dan Munshaw, and Amy Ford.
We had rich discussions about the barriers around traditional procurement, the opportunity to utilize the $4 billion spent annually on hospital food to advance planetary health, and the potential to shift to new ways of designing values-based strategies into the purchasing process.
Check out the YouTube webinar recording to the right.