Practitioner Resources
These resources provide valuable knowledge for those looking to implement or learn about nutrition interventions.
Start Here: Featured Resources
“Food is Medicine: An Assessment of Hawaiʻi’s Food and Nutrition Services Landscape” (2025) – Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice
This report provides a comprehensive look at existing nutrition support programs in Hawaiʻi, based on feedback from community organizations. It offers recommendations for integrating these services into healthcare (for example, investing in community care hubs and developing cross-sector partnerships) to guide implementation of the Medicaid waiver. Readers can learn about local challenges and opportunities identified by over 50 Hawaiʻi stakeholders, making this an essential roadmap for our work.
“Maximizing the Impact of Nutrition Interventions with Local Food Procurement” (2025) – Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (Harvard Law School)
This national report explores how Food is Medicine programs can source food from local producers to amplify benefits. It documents best practices and policy levers for values-based procurement – ensuring that initiatives like produce prescriptions not only improve health but also strengthen local economies. Notably, researchers found that spending on locally produced food has a multiplier effect of up to 1.9 – adding $0.32–$0.90 in local economic activity for each dollar spent. This guide informs our commitment to ʻāina-based solutions and has influenced Hawaiʻi’s approach of tying Medicaid nutrition services to local agriculture.
Food is Medicine Coalition (National) – The Food is Medicine Coalition (FIMC)
FIMC is a national coalition of nonprofits that provide medically tailored meals and groceries across the country. Resources, like their Policy Toolkit for Medicaid, show how other states and organizations are advancing Food is Medicine through policy change, rigorous evaluation, and quality standards. For instance, FIMC agencies were pioneers of the medically tailored meal model and have demonstrated significant reductions in healthcare utilization among participants. Hawaiʻi’s work aligns with these national efforts while tailoring strategies to our local context.
Additional Resources
This resource library will continue to be updated with new studies, policy updates, toolkits, and success stories as the field evolves.