Rachel Boyers, Garden Educator at UVM Medical Center, showcases some of the produce grown in the hospital’s Rooftop Garden as Admiral Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, tours the garden during a visit to UVM Medical Center on Wednesday. Adm. Levine’s visit highlighted the hospital’s Culinary Medicine Program, which has been recognized as a national leader for evidence-based integrations of culinary and clinical practices. UVMMC photo
UVM Medical Center’s Culinary Medicine Program in the Spotlight as National Health Care Leaders Focus on Food
Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for Health, highlights unique food- and nutrition-based programming for doctors, patients and community
Vermont Business Magazine As health care organizations across the country struggle to integrate nutrition-based practices into clinical services, or choose to forego the effort entirely, a small group of clinical dietitians at UVM Medical Center, led by a chef with a passion for sustainable and nutritious cuisine, have cultured a unique, evidence-based program that provides hands-on education and health-improvement resources to patients and clinicians.
The Culinary Medicine Program and its innovative offerings were in the spotlight today, as Adm. Rachel Levine, MD, Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, met with the team, toured UVM Medical Center’s rooftop garden and spent much of the day huddling with the dietitians, chefs and educators who have spent more than a decade pioneering food- and nutrition-based programs.
The program’s offerings have grown to include a wide range of clinical integrations – from a “Skills Before Pills” program tailored to chronic disease patients and “Kaleidoscope,” a month-long wellbeing program for tweens and teens that is team-led by pediatricians, dietitians and psychology specialists, to “Through the Cooking Glass,” a monthly culinary class developed for patients in UVM Medical Center’s award-winning Comprehensive Pain Program that focuses on anti-inflammatory nutrition, cooking techniques and energy conservation.
Adm. Levine’s visit highlights a growing catalogue of resources and partnerships, and a program that has become a nationally-recognized leader for evidence-based integrations of culinary and clinical practices – but is often overlooked despite a sustained national effort to make preventative care and reducing hospital admissions the foundation of the country’s health care strategy.
“We cannot address hunger and health as two separate issues, because we know how critical access to food is for a person to thrive,” said Adm. Levine. “We need to move from a disease care system to a wellness prioritization system. Food is Medicine programs, like the one at University of Vermont Medical Center, are part of this larger shift in how we approach health care.”
As program leaders seek to connect with clinicians-in-training, reaching them with scientific evidence and tools while their belief systems are still developing, they said sharing insight and information at the highest levels of health policy development was a critical opportunity to show how essential healthy food systems and nutrition are for both sustaining wellbeing and improving clinical outcomes.
An analysis of more than two dozen clinical trials that included more than 6,800 inpatients over 37 years found that nutritional support during hospitalization was associated with significantly lower rates of mortality, as well as non-elective hospital readmissions.
A 2019 study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that malnutrition among hospitalized patients is often unrecognized and untreated. “As a result, patient quality outcomes worse, excess costs of care are incurred, and patients and their families are disappointed and alarmed by slow, stalled, or no recovery from illness or injury,” the authors wrote of their findings.
“This is a real celebration of the last twelve years of us building the Culinary Medicine Program, and what the future is going to be,” said R. Leah Pryor, Executive Chef Manager and one of the program’s co-founders, “and it’s going to be great for us.”
Food as Medicine: Tools for Practitioners, Patients
Since Pryor joined UVM Medical Center in 2011 as a line chef, the hospital’s embrace of culinary medicine –both a strategy for enhancing patients’ wellbeing and the foundation of evidence-based tools for providers – reflects both her passion and vibrant support from a Nutritional Services team that plans and serves more than 2 million meals for patients, staff and visitors each year.
“I think of this as a revolution in health care,” said Ashley Turner, RD, a registered dietitian and director of Nutrition Services at UVM Medical Center. “It’s not just ‘let’s put some food plans together and feed you more fruits and vegetables.’ There’s clinical evidence that access to healthy food and nutrition education empowers patients, improves their overall health and has clinical benefits while they are in the hospital or receiving treatment. We ultimately spend more on healthy, local food options to feed our patients because we know that we are part of the solution to reducing the cost of health care, reducing patients’ length-of-stay in the hospital, and improving clinical outcomes.”
Partnerships with local farmers and a focus on sustainably sourcing high-quality food have provided the foundation as Pryor and a small team of dietitians, garden educators and chef educators developed clinical, educational and community programs. The offerings focus on helping participants develop a wide variety of food-preparation skills, healthy habits, mental resiliency and self-discovery.
They also provide a unique blend of clinical and nutritional expertise, bringing dietitians, chefs and gardeners together with family medicine practitioners, occupational therapists, psychologists and other clinicians, depending on the goal of the program.
“Giving people tools and agency really kind of seals the deal, because it becomes part of their belief system,” said Pryor. “It’s not someone telling them what to do. It’s giving them information and opportunity to create their own optimal health.”
In addition to UVM Medical Center’s Learning Garden on the Fanny Allen campus, and the hospital’s Rooftop Garden – both of which are open 24/7 to patients and support in-house therapeutic gardening programs – Culinary Medicine offers hands-on cooking classes, group gardening programs, behavioral change sessions and curated demonstrations, workshops webinars and lectures.
The program also offers a robust mix of free, publicly-available resources, including:
- Downloadable recipe cards
- A YouTube channel that shares recipes and information on how to cook, garden and simple, cost-effective ways to include more plant-based foods in your diet.
For more information on the team’s free, public events – as well as upcoming courses and classes, visit the Culinary Medicine Program’s website.
Feeding the Future: What’s Next
With nearly three decades of sustainability work at UVM Medical Center providing a launching pad, both Pryor and Turner say clinically-focused initiatives like the group’s “Food and Mood” course – a pilot program that will launch this fall and investigate links between diet and mental health – are an increasing focus for their team.
“Culinary medicine is a tool for the practitioner, whoever they may be – doctor, nurse, registered dietitian, patients and community members,” said Pryor. “We want to get ‘plug-and-play’ resources in front of people that are grounded in affordability, accessibility and adaptability.”
Far from the passion project that began in 2011, the program is now entrenched as a national pace-setter for the clinical integration of food- and nutrition-based concepts.
In 2016 the program joined the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, a nationwide network of organizations that use food preparation education to drive public health improvements across medical, educational, business and community settings.
One year later, supported by grant funding, Pryor was able to carve out an entirely new role at UVM Medical Center: Chef Educator. The funding has allowed the chef – and the Culinary Medicine team – to focus on expanding educational offerings and pursue new clinical partnerships across primary and specialty care. The team is also pursuing integration with UVM Health Network’s electronic medical record, EPIC, to make nutritional information available to care team members in real time, and patients via platforms like MyChart.
“From a hospital standpoint, we don’t have to do this – and a lot of hospitals choose not to do it,” said Turner. “We offer it for our patients because it is the right thing to do, and that’s what I am most proud of. This is a non-negotiable, do-the-right-thing. That’s what makes our program so special.”
Admiral Rachel Levine (middle), with UVMMC CEO Stephen Leffler, MD, and staff, visited UVM Medical Center on Wednesday, meeting with executives, clinicians, dietitians, chefs, garden educators and members of the hospital’s Nutritional Services team as part of a deep dive into the hospital’s Culinary Medicine Program. The program, founded more than a decade ago, is a national leader for evidence-based integrations of culinary and clinical practices.
About the University of Vermont Medical Center
The University of Vermont Medical Center is a 499-bed tertiary care regional referral center providing advanced care to approximately 1 million residents in Vermont and northern New York. Together with our partners at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, we are Vermont’s academic medical center. The University of Vermont Medical Center also serves as a community hospital for approximately 150,000 residents in Chittenden and Grand Isle counties.
The University of Vermont Medical Center is a member of The University of Vermont Health Network, an integrated system established to deliver high-quality academic medicine to every community we serve.
For more information visit www.UVMHealth.org/MedCenter or visit our Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blog sites at www.UVMHealth.org/MedCenterSocialMedia.
Source: 8.7.2024. UVM Health Network. UVMHealth.org
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