"Ignoring the root of the problem?
Health researchers in the U.K., where social prescribing was first popularized, have pointed to the inability for social prescriptions to address health inequities and warned against claims that they do. Doctors have also raised concerns that food prescriptions ignore the root of the problem and put an extra cost on already strained health-care systems.
There are similar concerns in the U.S. around the “medicalization of poverty.” Focusing on initiatives that health-care providers can do with limited time and resources obscures the policy inaction they are trying to compensate for.
Researchers in the U.S., where “food as medicine” first came to prominence as a movement in health care, have also highlighted its inability to address the structural determinants of food insecurity and have called for health-care systems to champion structural change.
At a time when food banks in Canada are speaking out about governments’ abdication of their responsibility to ensure that people’s basic needs are met, calling for immediate policy reform and eschewing public funding that would further institutionalize them, health-care providers should not be introducing yet another charitable food-assistance initiative.
Entrenching an ad-hoc, food-based response that intervenes at the point when food-insecure people need health-care services may hinder policy progress by giving the impression that this problem is being addressed."
Sent: May 25, 2023 3:00 PM
To: PROOF Food Insecurity Policy Research <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Food prescriptions – a short-sighted response to food insecurity
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