On January 31, 2023, Nourish co-hosted a webinar on implementing health care menus that are rich in plants and more sustainable, in collaboration with the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, PEACH Health Ontario, and CASCADES.
Webinar recording: Food prescriptions with Kate Mulligan
Innovation Brief: Food Prescriptions
Food insecurity has a direct impact on health outcomes, affecting both physical and mental health. While it is a complex issue, health care can take leadership by working with communities to increase access to healthy, culturally appropriate foods.
Innovation Brief: Planetary Health Menus and Procurement
Food is the single strongest lever for planetary health, and health care can take leadership by integrating it as an organizational mandate, resdesigning menus with low-carbon options, and prioritizing values-based procurement.
Read more in our brief about Planetary Health Menus & Procurement.
Innovation Brief: Traditional Food as Medicine
Health care can take leadership on reconciliation by designing food menus with Indigenous communities, developing legislation and policies to navigate barriers to wild game, and encourage staff to get training on Indigenous foodways.
Read more in our brief, "Traditional Food as Medicine."
Building healthier Northern and Indigenous communities through Nourish
In the face of the pandemic and a growing awareness of systemic anti-Indigenous racism in the health care system, Nourish worked with leaders from several communities to strengthen food security, celebrate Indigenous ways of knowing, and increase understanding of Indigenous realities. The following is an excerpt from our final report to the Frontline Fund, whose support made this work possible.
With the onset of the pandemic, food insecurity was exacerbated and Indigenous communities, especially those that are rural and remote, experienced increased pressure on their food systems as a result of disruptions in food supply chains, reduced ability to travel and harvest, and fewer occasions to celebrate and share food together.
In response, Nourish took a multi-phase approach by supporting community initiatives, facilitating knowledge exchanges, addressing systemic anti-Indigenous racism in health care, launching a national learning series, and creating opportunities for health care and community leaders to learn on the land from local Indigenous leaders.
PHASE 1 - Food Rx grants & knowledge exchanges
Nourish awarded five $50k Food Rx grants to mobilize community-led, innovative, capacity-building projects that supported both food security and Indigenous foodways. Food Rx initiatives built and promoted Indigenous leadership and centered Indigenous foodways and values, supporting the transformation of health services to better reflect Indigenous understandings of food sovereignty and wellbeing.
Nourish hosted two virtual Food Rx grantee knowledge exchanges to facilitate networking, sharing, and peer learning between grantees, the Nourish team, and the Indigenous and Allies Advisory. Participants appreciated this space to share their insights, innovations, successes, challenges and questions.
PHASE 2 - Short film
Nourish produced a short film exploring food security, experiences of anti-Indigenous systemic racism in health care, and the power of traditional Indigenous foodways. Called "Why does hospital food matter for reconciliation?" it resonated with many across the country, and has been viewed 3347 times in English (as of June 17, 2021), with a version available with French subtitles as well.
PHASE 3 - National Action Learning series
In April 2021, Nourish launched a national education Action Learning series called Food is Our Medicine (FIOM). The Action Learning series highlights and amplifies Indigenous voices and perspectives to contextualize Indigenous foodways work through multimedia resources, and contributions of Indigenous leaders in medicine and systems change.
Additionally, FIOM features the work of several Indigenous artists in its visual identity and beadwork (the first 200 learners to complete the learning journey will be gifted a handcrafted beaded pin). FIOM provides health care leaders with knowledge and tools to decolonize food in health care and use it as an organizational pathway to deepen conversations about systemic racism and reconciliation.
Land-based learning grants
With the end of the pandemic in view, seven teams in the Nourish Anchor Cohort will have access to grants up to $7k to participate and host on-the-land learning and relationship-building with Indigenous partners and knowledge keepers in their area. This program will start off in a good way with a Cultural Mindfulness session on June 28, hosted by George Couchie from Nipissing First Nation, with the goal of sowing the seeds or building upon existing relationships between health care, community organizations, and Indigenous communities.
Along with supporting Nourish programming, the Food Rx grants are addressing the unique challenges found at the complex intersection of three factors within health care: the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic anti-Indigenous racism, and food (in)security.
The entire process of this work was guided by the Nourish Indigenous and Allies Advisory, with participation from a wider circle of Indigenous leaders.
Getting Back To Normal? Not If “Normal” Means Indigenous Food And Health Insecurity
With the summer solstice behind us and the prospect of a post-COVID “two dose” summer ahead, many are anticipating a return to normal. But the COVID era has revealed health inequities and structural realities that make return to “normal” untenable.
Incidents in the last twenty months, including the death of Joyce Echequan in a Quebec hospital, a higher death toll from overdoses than from COVID in Indigenous communities, and the continued-unearthing of mass graves of children at Indian Residential Schools, highlight that systemic racism has flourished in our collective silence and inaction.
This is not a baseline to which we can return.
As we reopen, we must all confront a question that stands between a return to normal and advancing toward a future that affirms the self determination of Indigenous peoples.
Read more in the policy brief from Elisa Levi and Hayley Lapalme.
Webinar: Launch of "Why Hospital Food Matters for Reconciliation"
Source: Nourish
Year: 2021
On March 23, 2021 Nourish launched the short film, "Why Hospital Food Matters for Reconciliation." We were excited to have nearly 200 people join us to mark this special occasion, followed by a Q&A facilitated by Kelly Gordon (Six Nations Health Services) with panellists Ben Genaille (Interior Health), Raven Crow (Waasegiizhig Nanaandawe'iyewigamig), and Stephanie Cook (Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region).
The launch webinar recording is available here.
The short film is available here in English (https://youtu.be/BUaiR8-FimA) and in French (https://youtu.be/p1HvGR3hy48).
Why Hospital Food Matters for Reconciliation
Why does hospital food matter for reconciliation? Health care institutions exert a significant cultural influence in Canada. Like everything else, they are the product of Canada’s colonial history and too often perpetuate systemic discrimination embedded in their policies and practices. This was on display with the horrific death of Joyce Echaquan.
So how can health care institutions use their influence to create change? Food is a good place to start. This film explains how colonialism created an “Indigenous health gap” and how food can play an important role in decolonizing our institutions. It profiles three leading examples of health care institutions practicing anchor leadership by working with Indigenous communities to unlearn colonial ways of operating and by bringing traditional Indigenous recipes, ingredients and ways of knowing into their organizations.
TAKE ACTION to help your healthcare organization to unlock the power of Indigenous foodways by screening this film and getting involved.
A guide to sustainable menus: A step by step approach to sustainability
Source: Nourish
Date: 2020
We are pleased to share the new website for the Sustainable Menus Guide for health care!
The outcome of a Nourish national collaborative project, the Guide was designed and written by, and for, health care food service managers and directors.
The Guide helps health care food service managers to make increasingly sustainable menus, one step at a time. The Guide simplifies efforts to reduce the environmental impact of diets, while improving the offering of healthy, affordable, acceptable, and fair food for clients.
The Guide presents research on possibilities for making more socially, environmentally, and economically responsible choices,. The Guide is organized to walk users through menu design process, organized by food category: from soups and main meals to desserts, beverages, and snacks.
Congratulations to the Innovator team who’s hard work and collaboration is behind this guide. They would love to hear how you are using the guide and are available to support its adoption, Contact: info@menudurable.ca
Anchor Cohort Recruitment Package: Developing Your Expression of Interest
Source: Nourish
Date: 2020
Recruitment for the next Nourish two-year cohort has begun with a team and capacity-building phase that will run for six months, up to the spring 2021 announcement of the selected cohort.
We have prepared a Recruitment Package to support you through this phase, and to help you develop your Expression of Interest (EOI) for the Anchor Collaborative Cohort. Later in the recruitment process, full applications will build upon the EOI, including the request for details on diverse partners and team members who have come on board during the recruitment period.
Webinar: Anchor Cohort Recruitment Launch
Source: Nourish
Date: 2020
Nourish is seeking its next cohort for a two-year leadership innovation program that will support health care and community collaborations innovating through food to build health for people and the planet. Join us November 24, 2020 for the recruitment kickoff webinar to learn about the 6-month capacity building program that precedes the cohort selection in spring 2021.
From individual action to systems change: Instituting values-based food procurement
Source: Nourish
Year: 2020
Nourish aims to use the power of food to build health for people and the planet. Our Transition Practice Studies highlight the work of Canadian healthcare institutions innovating food culture and practice to advance this aim.
The City of Thunder Bay procures food in ways that enhance the social, economic, cultural, and environmental well-being of the community.
Read online the full Transition Practice Study and download the Executive Summary.
Traditional Food as Medicine at Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre
Source: Nourish
Year: 2020
Nourish aims to use the power of food to build health for people and the planet. Our Transition Practice Studies highlight the work of Canadian healthcare institutions innovating food culture and practice to advance this aim.
Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win provides holistic, culturally responsive and appropriate care (minoyawin) through programming and healing practices informed by Indigenous wisdom. Because “food is medicine,” a crucial part of this programming is serving Traditional foods (Miichim).
Read online the full Transition Practice Study and download the Executive Summary.
Transforming patient experience and reducing food waste through room service
Source: Nourish
Year: 2020
Nourish aims to use the power of food to build health for people and the planet. Our Transition Practice Studies highlight the work of Canadian healthcare institutions innovating food culture and practice to advance this aim.
CHU Ste-Justine in Montreal, Quebec implemented an on-demand room service model for hospital food services to eliminate food waste and increase patient satisfaction. They reaped the added benefit of enhanced staff satisfaction and the opportunity for sustainable procurement.
Read online the full Transition Practice Study and download an Executive Summary.
Nourish 2050 - Rockefeller Food System Vision Prize Submission
Source: Nourish
Date: 2020
Nourish’s vision was selected as one of the 79 Semi-Finalists (from 1319 Visions submitted) in Rockefeller Foundations’ Food System Vision Prize, which asked for organizations around the world to envision “Regenerative and Nourishing Food Futures for 2050”.
Nourish’s work is movement building for reconnection - with land, food, culture, health, and each other. Disconnection from the ecological and social determinants of health has led to a great untethering of our food and health institutions from the abundant natural and cultural systems that give rise to well-being. Nourish dove deep into imagining how reconnection can radically transform the food and health systems in 30 years. We envisioned how social and cultural shifts can impact tastes and behaviour around our food systems, how new data systems can enhance evidence-based investments into the social and ecological determinants of health, and how centering reconciliation and equity work with the most marginalized can lead to abundance for all.
What is hospital food from the future [2030]?
Source: Nourish
Date: 2019
At Nourish's Food for Health Symposium (May 15-16, 2019 in Toronto), the audience was transported to the future of 2030 to be a part of “The Hospital Food Experience from the Future”, where three hospitals collaborated with three “celebrity” chefs to create three ambitious dishes that embody the future of what a patient-friendly, planet-friendly, and scale-friendly hospital meal could look and taste like.
Wasan Report 2019: Equitable Access to Sustainable Food for All
Source: Nourish
Date: 2019
Nourish believes sustainability and equity are interwoven. We convened a group of 21 leaders on traditional Anishinaabe and Ojibwe territory at Wasan Island on Lake Rosseau from Sunday, October 6 - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 for a conversation on how the health and community sectors can collaborate to support and anchor Equitable Access to Sustainable Food for All.
Nourish Phase 1 Developmental Evaluation (2016 - 2019)
Source: Nourish
Date: 2019
This summary report follows the activity of Nourish from Fall 2015 to Spring 2019. The intent of this evaluation is to help the program staff, lead partners and project advisors examine how the initiative took shape, determine what systems effects were observed, and assess signs of progress towards longer-term objectives.
Miichim [Documentary Short]
Source: Nourish
Date: 2019
The short documentary"Miichim" is about Kathy Loon and her team at Sioux Lookout MenoYaWin Health Centre (SLMHC) in Northwestern Ontario and their dedication to serving traditional foods to their Indigenous patients for health and healing.