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Reflections on National Produce Prescription Collaborative’s (NPPC) National Summit

DC Greens' Produce Rx Manager, Luisa Furstenberg-Beckman, reflects on her time at NPPC's National Summit and the work of Food Is Medicine in the season ahead.

Picture of DC Greens

DC Greens

A group of colleagues and friends gather at the Summit

Last month, I attended the National Produce Prescription Collaborative’s (NPPC) National Summit. DC Greens has been a member of NPPC since its inception, and for the past two years we’ve sat on the collaborative’s steering committee.  

The Summit felt like a reunion, full of old friends as well as new folks coming into the Food Is Medicine space. The Summit pulled cross-sector attendees together from government, academia, medicine, philanthropy, the private sector, and nonprofits. We touched on various aspects of the Produce Prescription field and together we asked hard questions on critical topics, like:

  • Healthcare: how do we integrate deeper into the clinical workflows and systems our providers are using?
  • Community engagement: how do we better listen to our communities to support them best?
  • Storytelling: how do we share the successes of our programs to broader audiences?
  • State and national policy: how do we make larger systemic changes in food access and shift the broken systems we are working under?
  • And most importantly, funding: how do we build partnerships that sustain our programs and move us away from the constant funding grind year in and year out?

Simple topics, right? Hardly. However, these are the important ones that we need to be talking through as a cross-sector field in order to ensure Food is Medicine interventions are more impactful, sustainable, and effective. Many of these areas are work that Produce Rx at DC Greens is already doing, like soliciting feedback and always centering community voice. Other topics are things we are working towards, like becoming a covered service under DC Medicaid (fingers crossed!).  

All in all, I love being a part of these gatherings. I share about the work we are doing at DC Greens with pride, and listen with awe and interest at the other phenomenal work being done across the country. The conversations was boisterous, the food was delicious (you can’t have a FIM event without good food!), and the work continues. Looking forward to next year and all that we will have achieved.