Project Open Hand

Through the Project Open Hand community nutrition program, older adults (60+ years) and adults with disabilities (18-59 years) can enjoy a nutritious meal at various congregate sites and community centers located across san francsico daily--365 days a year. Not only do older adults and adults with disabilities receive a highly nutritious meal but clients that visit our congregate sites experience decreased risks of isolation and loneliness and enjoy the positive effects of social integration and improved quality of life. As the largest congregate meal provider for these populations in san francisco, Project Open Hand made changes and adjustments to respond to the covid-19 pandemic to ensure clients were still receiving necessarily nutritional resources while also being safe and sheltering in place as high risk populations. Services were uninterrupted but changed to a model that focused primarily on addressing food insecurity for highly vulnerable populations. Increased demand was met through a safe takeaway model. Since then we have reopened all of our sites for congregate meals while also maintaining a takeaway model for individuals that are high-risk populations or that are not ready to dine in social settings.

Poh is the fiscal sponsor of the ca food is medicine coalition (calfimc). Calfimc advocated with ca members of congress for bipartisan federal legislation to fund a medically tailored meal intervention pilot in 10 states in original medicare, to protect and fund the federal supplemental assistance program, and for funding allocations for medically tailored meals via the budget appropriations. Advocated for state legislation to make medically tailored meal interventions a covered benefit in medicaid in ca post in lieu of services waiver. Contributed to the national food is medicine coalition committee activities (policy, research, clinical), providing input on public comment and requests for information. Calfimc has supported all coalition members in advancing and updating the value propositions for services with private health plans, increasing the number of provider agreements with medical managed care plans in ca medicaid. Provided recommendations to ca department of health care services to improve quality, access, operations, and oversight of medically supportive food and nutrition services in calaim community supports.

Project Open Hand's wellness program offers medically-tailored nutrition interventions to support individuals living with chronic diseases. Our interventions are comprised of nutrient-rich meals and/or fresh groceries paired with nutrition assessment, counseling and education with our team of registered dietitians. Clients can shop for fresh, healthy groceries at our two grocery centers located in san francisco, alameda county and contra costa county or via delivery by poh's distribution team. In january 2022, Project Open Hand began providing its medically-tailored nutrition interventions to medi-cal members through the expansion of dhcs community supports contracts. Since then, Project Open Hand has been working with four managed care plans across sf, ac and cc counties and continues to expand this service.