The BIPOC PRx Cohort
Early November, the inaugural BIPOC PRx Cohort gathered in Chicago with representatives from Corbin Hill Food Project, Buffalo Go Green Inc, Hmong American Farmers Association, and La Semilla Food Center.
While each organization is tackling issues of food insecurity from different perspectives, their common goal is to develop food system programs centered on food sovereignty. For example, the Hmong American Farmers Association aims to liberate Hmong farmers through increased visibility of the pernicious impacts of Big Food on migrant families in the South. CH’s goal is to ensure community involvement and voices in defining Food as Medicine and informing how food shows up in communities. The collective vision is for communities most affected by food insecurity and scarcity to have greater impact on national public health initiatives, such as Food as/is Medicine, which has been gaining traction across the nation.
The BIPOC PRx Cohort is a collaboration of Wholesome Wave and Daisa Enterprises with an aligned goal of better understanding the impact of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) leadership in the Food is Medicine (FIM) field. Along with a $40,000 capacity building grant awarded to each organization, the purpose of the Cohort is to support each organization’s capacity to contribute to field growth and development. Additionally, the cohort will engage in PRx policy change, explore sustainable program funding models, build relationships and foster peer learning with other BIPOC-led programs, and help develop equity frameworks for produce prescription programming. This is an innovative effort to develop clear, rigorous framing for equity in food and health programming, addressing the needs of program leaders and funders, and ensuring that organizations like CHFP have access to and support for informing local and national policy change.
The Cohort’s meetings will conclude in December 2023, however each member will continue to inform the development of the Fidelity, Equity, Dignity (FED) framework and how it is implemented in their projects and programs. They will also consult on novel research scales that can measure these values in efforts to make evaluation more inclusive of the often invisible assets and illusive barriers to program success.
