Project Lead: Danica Cowan, MS, RD
Key Team Members: Linda Dulong, MSN, ANP-C; Dorothy Chiu, PhD
Project Description:
Poor diet poses a significant barrier to integrative health equity. Dietary change is a critical component of an effective integrative care plan, but many Osher patients lack foundational cooking skills and culinary knowledge to facilitate these changes via cooking tasty and healthful meals. Thus, it is often very challenging for Osher patients to fully adhere to their dietary recommendations. This is especially a concern for Osher patients eligible for the Community Care Fund. Here, additional barriers to eating healthfully often include a lack of equipment and ingredients. This project will address the barriers above by partnering with 18 Reasons to pilot 2 rounds of virtual cooking classes, as well as build up resources at Osher to support cooking such as a spice bank and cooking appliance library. We will also assess program feasibility and acceptability as well as examine changes in cooking skills, culinary knowledge, and basic dietary intakes.
Statement of Project Feasibility and Anticipated Impact:
18 Reasons is a well-established SF based non-profit that provides in person and virtual nutrition-oriented cooking classes to many underserved individuals and families in the Bay Area. Since 2017, 18 Reasons has partnered with various UCSF groups and Linda Dulong, team member on this project, worked with them while she was a provider in WHPC. Successful completion of this project will instill valuable cooking skills to more under-resourced members of our Osher patient population, hopefully inspiring better health. Additionally, this project will kickstart the ability of Osher providers to provide culinary medicine programming to its patient population. Culinary medicine is the evidence-based application of food and cooking to medicine such that patients are empowered to make healthful dietary decisions for disease treatment and prevention. Project outcomes such as the cooking appliance library, spice bank, and information collected from the evaluation component will also help inform and improve future iterations of this offering.
Total Budget Requested: $20,000
Comments
A spice bank sounds like such
A spice bank sounds like such a creative idea--how would it work?
I think spice pharmacy might
I think spice pharmacy might be a better description.
This is wonderful! I love the
This is wonderful! I love the spice bank idea- would this be like the bulk bins at Berkeley Bowl or little samples to send out along with recipes and instructions?
If you need student involvement to help with the rollout, I would be happy to connect you with the Culinary Medicine student interest group.
I think it could almost work
I think it could almost work like a spice pharmacy (maybe that's a better term), where participants can request which spices they want, we portion them out, and they could pick them up at visits, or they could be sent with their produce boxes for that week's class.
It would be great to connect with the Culinary Medicine interest group!
I had a similiar question to
I had a similiar question to Ariana. I was curious how individuals would access the appliance library and what infrastructure would be in place to make sure the appliances are returned? This would be a great resource.
Danica, I love that the cooking videos are something that can be sustainable for Osher long term and that this project involved community partnership.
Furuther the potential for Osher providers to learn culinary medicine sounds like a great idea and I am sure it would be highly sought after. I hope to learn more about your ideas for this programming.