Recipe for Success: Virtua Health's Food Is Medicine Program Goes Mobile

The New Jersey health system is rolling out two new vehicles this summer as part of its Eat Well program, which connects patients to nutritious food and other resources.

The Food is Medicine movement suggests that people who eat nutritious meals will see better health outcomes, and that proper nutrition should be a part of the care plan. The challenge for healthcare innovators lies in connecting patients to the foods they should be buying and preparing.

Virtua Health has been addressing that issue since 2017 with its Eat Well program, which began with a mobile farmer's market and two brick-and-mortar 'Food Farmacies,' where patients could get food 'prescribed' by their primary care providers and access resources on nutrition.

More recently, the New Jersey-based health system has gone mobile, bringing food to those who can't easily get to the market or grocery store.

This past April, Virtua Health unveiled a new Eat Well Mobile Grocery Store, a 40-foot vehicle that visits neighborhoods where food insecurity is an issue. And the health system will soon be adding the Eat Well Mobile Food Farmacy, a mobile version of its brick-and-mortar program that will be dispatched to primary care locations where doctors are prescribing nutritious meals for selected patients.

Identifying the Barriers to Care

Stephanie Fendrick, Virtua's EVP and chief strategy officer, says non-profits traditionally use health needs assessments to gain a better understanding of the barriers to care faced by their patients.

"This assessment has consistently shown us that food insecurity is a top concern in our local community," she said. "So that really put it on our radar."

Stephanie Fendrick, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer for Virtua Health. Photo courtesy Virtua Health.

Fendrick says Eat Well was launched with the idea of giving primary care physicians a tool to address nutrition in care management, particularly for patients who are living with chronic issues. She says those doctors "are some of our biggest champions."

"Our physicians are acutely aware of the fact that it's hard to be healthy if you don't have access to healthy foods," she says. "They know that [with] many of the chronic diseases that they're facing every day, it's important that their patients have access to fresh fruits and vegetables and understand how to make a healthy meal, how to combine different ingredients to create those healthy meals."

The mobile program, Fendrick says, came from an understanding that food insecurity often goes hand-in-hand with transportation barriers. So instead of asking their patients to go to the market, Virtua Health is bringing the market to the patient.

"You can recommend all of that, but if you don't have access to the food, then how is someone going to change their lifestyle and incorporate [healthy eating] into their lifestyle?" she asks. "We felt that the mobile piece of it was important, to take food where people needed it,"

Virtua Health launched its first mobile grocery store in 2020, and April's rollout of a refurbished bus given to the health system by the New Jersey Transit Authority replaces the original bus, which was also a NJ Transit vehicle. A $1.5 million donation this year from the state of New Jersey paid for two vehicles (at $500,000 each), as well as renovations to the health system's distribution center, food and staff.

Fendrick says the mobile food program targets neighborhoods where food insecurity is high. The buses are parked at public locations like health centers, churches and senior housing complexes. Anyone in the neighborhood is welcome to shop at the bus, which offers nutritious foods at prices 40% to 50% lower than retail sites.

in some cases, Fendrick says, the food choices are tailored to the neighborhood's cultural identity. In Camden, for instance, roughly half of the population is Hispanic, so resources are offered in Spanish as well as English and certain foods are added to the bus.

"We're establishing trust with our community," she says.

Virtua Health has a fleet of six vehicles altogether, with three devoted to mobile programs such as pediatrics and cancer screenings. In some instances the health system will pair a food truck with another vehicle to offer multiple services in one location.

"We're really trying to wrap services around our patients to keep them healthy in their communities," Fendrick says.

Prescribing Food as a Part of the Care Plan

The Food Farmacy, meanwhile, is more focused. The program – which now consists of brick-and-mortar Food Farmacies in Camden and Mount Holly – enables primary care providers to prescribe certain food to patients who have food insecurity as well as a chronic condition like diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease. The program gives patients free groceries that are "medically tailored" to their care plan, as well as access to nutrition counseling and other resources, for up to six months.

"Having access to certain healthy foods is great, but having the knowledge of what to do with them and how to use them to make healthy meals is also a very important part of the program," Fendrick points out.

The new mobile Food Farmacy will offer the same services, and will visit primary care offices (initially in Hammonton and Washington Township) where doctors are giving their patients prescriptions for the program.

According to Virtua executives, the outreach is showing positive results. The mobile grocery store program saw more than 7,500 transactions in 2024 and has grown year over year, while all of the Eat Well programs saw more than 47,000 transactions in 2024, an 8.6% increase over the previous year.

In addition, according to a survey of participants, 94% of customers to the mobile grocery store reported consuming more fruit and vegetables, and 88% say they've prepared more nutritious meals as a result.

Fendrick says this data is important, but the real test of the program's value will come over time, as the health system looks at clinical outcomes. For patients with chronic conditions, short-term details like weight loss, A1c levels and blood pressure will be charted. Over the long run, they'll be keeping track of health and wellness metrics and quality of life.

"That's taking us a little more time to get our arms around," she says. "Are we truly making an impact on their health outcomes?

The long run also means developing connections with the retail community and others to ensure a steady supply of food. Since the program's launch in 2017, more than $10 million in philanthropic donations have been invested in the program.

"We're looking for different types of partnerships and relationships to help keep this sustainable," Fendrick adds.

As for where the program goes from here, Fendrick says she wants to see steady growth for now, along with more education for both providers and patients about the value of good nutrition. She notes that Virtua Health sent one of its buses down to Atlantic City for a while at the request of the governor, and the program was such a success that a local provider is now running its own program there.

And of course, now that Virtua Health has a mobile farmer's market and grocery stores, could a food truck or two not be far behind?

"I would never say never," Fendrick says.