What Happens When You Team Up with Chefs, Dietitians, Local Communities, and Government

By Irene Yeh 

May 15, 2026 | Food as medicine is increasingly gaining momentum as a preventative treatment for diseases and healthcare. Yet in the U.S., there are still people who cannot afford or access nutritional food. At the Food as Medicine Summit in Chicago last week, Amanda Goldman, M.S., RD, LD, FAND, system vice president of food and nutrition services at CommonSpirit Health, and Tonya Johnson, market director of food and nutrition services at CommonSpirit Health, gave a presentation on how their large healthcare system is helping get food to people in need all over the country and how collaborating with chefs, dietitians, local businesses, and government has allowed them to ensure accessibility to healthy, nutritional meals.  

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” said Johnson.  

Collaboration Between Different Industries 

“In a lot of healthcare systems, there’s still a little bit of a divide between the food service area and the clinical nutrition area,” said Goldman. CommonSpirit is working to bridge those two fields. Currently, CommonSpirit is the largest faith-based non-profit healthcare system in the country, with 2,200 care sites, 138 hospitals in 24 states, 45,000 nurses, and almost 3,000 Food and Nutrition Services team members, many of whom are chefs.  The organization ensures they are meeting the updated CMS dietary guidelines. 

Food and Nutrition Services at CommonSpirit has a simple but effective mission: providing delicious, wholesome, nutritious meals that help to build healthier communities by delivering culinary excellence with evidence-based clinical nutrition care. By bridging the culinary arts and clinical nutrition, chefs and dietitians will be able to innovatively collaborate to get nutritious meals to the communities that need them. “We need to walk in each other’s shoes and play off of each other’s strengths.” 

There is an emphasis on developing recipes to enhance and elevate patient and retail menus, as well as offering a variety of cuisines from multiple different countries to provide chefs opportunities to create inspired dishes that are both healthy and delicious. The organization also serves regional preferences in their different markets across the nation.  

They also work closely with community health, with 80% of their sites receiving grant funding to help drive food as medicine initiatives. Furthermore, they offer food pharmacy boxes and edible food recovery programs—which collect surplus, safe-to-eat food from grocery stores, restaurants, and schools—and distribute it to people in need, rather than sending it to landfills.  in certain areas. CommonSpirit has worked with different national business partners for edible food recovery, as well as hospitals on the West Coast. They partner with human resources and employee wellness programs for Harvest of the Month, a program (often state-led) that promotes eating seasonal, locally grown produce in schools and communities. During these Harvest of the Month events, the organization’s dietitians provide facts about seasonal harvests and chefs provide recipes and preparation ideas, storage methods, and tips on how to identify good quality produce at stores. 

Tackling Food Insecurity and Accessibility 

An Arkansas native, Johnson discussed her home state’s status as the most food insecure state in the country, as well as one of the unhealthiest. Johnson provided a few reasons why. The first is the quality of the food that is being sold to people in low-income situations. “All we hear about is, ‘more value for your money,’” she explained. She mentioned dollar stores and gas stations, which have cheap but highly processed, low-nutritional value food. This results in large quantities of low-quality food, leading to malnutrition and obesity. One of CommonSpirit’s goals is changing marketing and behavior at a local level.  

Johnson emphasized lifestyle changes instead of diet. Dietary changes tend to focus on restrictions, which can eliminate key nutrients and increase chances of regaining weight, leading to frustration for the patient. Whereas lifestyle changes focus on long-term sustainability that can support the immune system, maintain weight, and are more manageable.   

Johnson also mentioned how the industrialization of food led to increased illness in people and decreased skills in procuring one’s own food. Growing up on a farm, Johnson was taught how to grow, find, and preserve food. She recounted tending a garden with her grandmother, who taught her how to pickle, can, freeze, and blanch food to keep it in storage. “These are some lost skills that people today may not necessarily have because we’re not teaching those.” 

To address these lost skills, Johnson partnered with cooperative extension programs in Arkansas. Food pantries on all three of CommonSpirit’s Arkansas campuses have brochures and handouts that inform how to use simple food preservation techniques.  

“While food as medicine effectively equips individuals with skills, it works in concert with larger efforts to address the systemic causes of food insecurity,” explained Johnson. Many health systems currently screen patients for food insecurity and connect them with food assistance services. 

At CommonSpirit, they take it a step further by providing food assistance for their employees. The organization found that over 28% of their employees were food insecure. Employees are provided with heat-sealed packaged leftovers. They also joined the local food bank, which is how their Arkansas campus food pantry was established. Using startup funds and other aid they received, they bought refrigerators and freezers and were able to obtain fresh produce for the food bank.  

For the homeless population, who most likely do not have access to microwaves and other kitchen appliances to heat up or cook food, CommonSpirit offers pantry prescriptions for up to three months. Since their food pantry is a client choice model, it allows participants to choose their own food items. According to Johnson, this model gives participants the opportunity to try new items because it reduces the burden of having to decide between new foods and other living expenses, such as utility bills. 

On-Site Demos to Teach Healthy Cooking 

CommonSpirit focuses on fruits and vegetables and works with local farms to pick up excess produce for pantry members. However, some of this produce is not commonly eaten in the South, such as coconuts. These demonstrations have even reduced employee turnover and increased employee satisfaction and engagement. “We’re trying to change [how people eat] by doing cooking demos to show people clean, healthy cooking methods.”