Screen Shot 2020-01-22 at 2.01.09 PM.png

Nourish’s first cohort, the Innovator Cohort, brought together Innovators shaping the future of food in health care, from 2016 to 2019. Innovators from across the country worked with organizations and through national collaborative projects to use food in health care to improve the patient experience, institutional culture, and community well-being.

The national cohort of 26 Innovators was selected for their vision to elevate the role of food in patient care and community wellbeing. Many of the Innovators were responsible for setting menus, purchasing, or overseeing food services across a number of sites or an entire health authority.

Innovators pursued individual projects at their organizations to address one or more major themes of food in health care within their organizations. Their projects explored several innovative ideas and revealed insights on how change can happen in food in health care. Five national collaborative projects also emerged from the Innovator cohort, centred on strategic opportunities or leverage points.

Meet the nourish innovators

Innovator projects

Theory of Change for the Innovator Cohort

The backbone of Nourish’s Innovator program was to create a future where food is valued as fundamental to health and healing. Core to this was a leadership program designed for a cohort of Innovators who make decisions about food procurement, menus, and programming in their health care organizations. Nourish supported these systems leaders in their work, helping to advance local, sustainable, and traditional foods to a more central place in health care. Through this changed demand, we expected the supply of these foods to grow, and for new and strengthened relationships to be created with a greater diversity of suppliers.

We also aimed to influence the creation of a policy environment that supports food for health initiatives, driven by work to change the dominant narrative to one instead that values the interconnections between the food system and health system — and between the health of people and planet.

Impact of the Innovator Cohort

The Nourish team tracked and evaluated the impact of the Innovator Cohort (see Phase 1 Developmental Evaluation (2016 - 2019) Report), which explores four interrelated aspects of Nourish’s first three years:

Screen Shot 2019-09-13 at 3.50.57 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-09-13 at 3.51.00 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-09-13 at 3.48.52 PM.png

Read report

Transition Practice Studies

These Transition Practice Studies highlight the work of three of the Nourish Innovators in Canadian health care institutions working towards the goal of using food for the health of people and the planet.