Last May several colleagues at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) met over lunch to discuss how the hospital could introduce more fresh and nutritious foods for both patients and staff. The conversation caught on quickly and has grown into Heartbeets, an institution-wide effort to create a healthy food environment for the hospital’s diverse community.

Capay Valley Farm Shop is proud to partner with SFGH through our FarmShares CSA program. Service to the hospital’s cafeteria launched on January 15th thanks to active outreach from a hospital-wide committee of volunteers. The first couple of weeks have generated much buzz on Friday afternoons as people gather to talk recipes and pick up boxes of fresh food. The CSA is the first of a series of projects designed by the Heartbeets team to achieve the hospital’s goal of increasing wellness.

The Heartbeets team is also planning a farmers’ market, free farmers’ market, and a plan to source local foods for the cafeteria and institutional kitchen which feeds more than 200 inpatients a day. To boot, the hospital will leverage one of SFGH’s core strengths by offering nutritional education provided by trained patient volunteers. Together, these activities are intended to increase consumption of natural foods by the hospital’s patients, staff, and faculty.

Team members know that an abundance of unhealthy, unappetizing, and processed foods contradicts the hospital’s mission of improving the care and comfort of patients. As San Francisco’s safety net hospital, SFGH serves patients who are disproportionately affected by chronic diseases related to diet and nutrition – obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and osteoporosis.

The global healthcare community increasingly recognizes that changes in diet are vital to chronic disease prevention and management. “Nutrition is coming to the fore as a major modifiable determinant of chronic disease,” says the World Health Organization (WHO). ”Chronic diseases are the main cause of premature death and disability among the poorer populations of industrialized countries.” Thus promoting healthy food and nutrition is fundamental to the effective treatment and care of SFGH patients.

Providing access to natural foods will empower patients and staff to pursue opportunities for self care that complement the care they receive from providers. In addition to the convenience of FarmShares, the free farmers’ market and other Heartbeets projects will help the hospital community make the connection between nutrition and overall health.

The climate is right for Heartbeets to succeed, with broad internal support from CEO Sue Currin to the active Heartbeets team which has over 20 members. External resources are also aligning with the city’s recently adopted Healthy and Sustainable Food Policy which encourages public institutions like SFGH to increase sourcing of local, sustainable, natural foods.

Learn more about the Heartbeets program at: www.SFGHNaturalfoods.blogspot.com

by Thomas Nelson