Anchor Cohort teams are place-based teams made up of health care institutions taking a whole-of-hospital or health authority approach to working with their communities to experiment with opportunities around food as an upstream determinant of health.
VANCOUVER: UBC Planetary Healthcare Lab, Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver Coastal Health Public Health and Aboriginal Health
Food served in health care settings is often wasted and "neglected as a therapeutic intervention and relegated to a support service.” This collaborative brought together Vancouver General Hospital, UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Planetary Healthcare Lab, along with health care centres, academia, Indigenous groups, local growers, community advocates, and prominent chef Ned Bell, from Chefs for Oceans.
The team strived to take a more holistic view of food in health settings, acknowledging food not only as an economic good, but recognizing its power as "a source of nourishment, cultural identity, dignity, and a link to nature" along the continuum of care. With this perspective, meals can reflect diverse cultures and sustainability, and in so doing, "improve patient nutrition, experience, and equity while mitigating global climate change." Health care practitioners could also take into account food insecurity in home environments, and factor in its impact on wellbeing.
With a mandate from Vice President, Strategy, Innovation and Planetary Health, Darcia Pope, and the leadership from surgeon Dr. Andrea McNeill, this collaborative built up their "role as an anchor institution within British Columbia to create health and wellness for our communities, and to search for innovative, intersectional approaches to the wicked problems posed by a changing climate, COVID-19, health and social inequity, and our social and economic history."
Reach:
This team involved several sites, including Vancouver General, a large urban hospital with 700+ acute care beds serving a population of ~1.25 million residents. With partners across the city, as well as the UBC Faculty of Medicine, this team was poised to influence the way health care approaches food, from medical school students to food services workers.
The Vancouver team worked on:
Read the final Vancouver Anchor Team Impact Report here.
Encouraging plant-based meals for hospital staff, beginning with resident physicians, who are unable to access healthy foods at VGH after hours (between 7 pm-7 am)
Making plant-rich meal options more prevalent in monthly staff lunches
Piloting more sustainable and culturally-relevant meal options for inpatients
Introducing behavioural nudges toward plant-rich meals as the default in the VGH cafeteria
Expanding traditional food options for Indigenous patients in acute and long-term care settings, starting with building community engagement and partnerships
Building awareness and educating VCH staff on planetary health and the role of food in VCH’s planetary health strategy
Establishing sustainable health care food service infrastructure guidelines for new builds and renovations (in development)
These fit into the following Food for Health levers from Nourish:
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• Andrea MacNeill, Surgeon, Vancouver General Hospital
• Allison Muniak, Executive Director, Quality and Patient Safety, Infection Prevention and Control, and Risk Management, Vancouver Coastal Health
• Rachael Ritchie, Director of Innovation, Vancouver Coastal Health
• Sonja Janousek, Environmental Sustainability Manager, Vancouver Coastal Health
• Elaine Chu, Registered Dietitian and Manger of Food Operations, Royal Columbian Hospital
• Andreas Pilarinos, Research & Policy Lead on Indigenous Health, Vancouver Coastal Health
• Aubree McAtee, Sustainability Consultant, Vancouver Coastal Health,
• Brittany Bingham, Director of Indigenous Research, Vancouver Coastal Health
• Sunny Mak, Regional Director of Food Services, Vancouver Coastal Health
• Tina Hartnell, Regional Director of Food and Dietitian Services, Fraser Health
• Sarah Currie, Consultant, Provincial Health Services Authority
• Meghan Molnar, Public Health Dietitian, Vancouver Coastal Health
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• Annie Lalande, Graduate student & surgery resident, UBC Planetary Healthcare Lab
