A pilot program to provide healthy, local foods to patients dealing with chronic illnesses, is in its beginning stages at Russell County Hospital.

Food Is Medicine is a partnership between the Kentucky Department of Agriculture and the Kentucky Association of Health Plans.

What we noticed was that if you're in a county that has a hospital, it's usually the largest food consumer, single food consumer in the community.

And so looking at that from an agriculture standpoint, it seemed like a very missed opportunity that we've got throughout the state of Kentucky, around our hospitals and hospital systems to be able to get fresh, healthy, local food.

The first component is we're providing this locally sourced foods for the actual hospitals operations.

So that could be people that are in the hospitals, the families.

It's the cafeteria, it's those types of things.

But the other part that's also got a, an academic pilot component to it is working with a group that has type two diabetes and seeing if by providing these fresh fruits, vegetables and other, sundries, can we help them on their health journey?

We will identify the patients, get their consent, and then we'll start to follow them more closely.

And then the plan is, once we get those patients in the program, we will hand the physician, we'll write a prescription.

This is the neat part of it.

They'll write a prescription for food.

We'll give them pots and pans and utensils to cook with.

We'll give them education.

On what?

What does good food look like?

What does a healthy diet look like?

Get them in classes so they can learn to cook things that taste good but also are good for you.

The part that's the icing on the cake is yes, it's good that people eat this way.

It's even better that we can get it to them.

Locally grown.

One of the things that's unique about Kentucky is people forget what a huge agricultural state this is.

I think if memory serves, Kentucky has the largest cattle herd, east of the Mississippi River.

This isn't something where we have to go looking for these farmers in the same way it's there.

We just have to.

We just have to to make that connection and go do it.

We know that if food is given to you that it has been transported less.

That's been on the truck list.

That's been a real list, that it's more nutritious the closer it is to you.

We also know that as people get, these things are more flavorful.

So and so they'll eat more of them.

They'll they'll consume more.

They'll they'll desire the more.

We can impact our farmers and the profitability that we see in rural Kentucky.

To really try and save this farmland transition issue that we have and the loss of farmland and loss of farmers across this country, but particularly right here in Kentucky, this is 35 years in health care for me.

And maybe a lot of hospital administrators wouldn't say this, but let's be honest, we only exist because people are sick.

And if there wasn't a more sick people, we wouldn't be in business.

But this is different.

If we can get to the end of that and people say, man, I never know and I'm going to all, I'm always going to do this.

And, I don't know if my numbers show it, but I'm healthier and I feel better and my pants fit better.

If we can do that and then some other people can learn from this.

This is this is redemption for us.

And health care.

The Kentucky Association of Health Plans is funding the program through a $300,000 grant over a three year period.

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