HEALTHY FOODS MARKET

The Healthy Foods Market is set up like a farmer’s market, with rows of fresh produce and other perishable food items available for individuals to select. The program provides food assistance at healthcare clinics or healthcare sites and helps low-income individuals who are also facing a chronic health issue.

How the Healthy Foods Market Works

Produce and other food items are delivered from Roadrunner® Food Bank’s warehouse and set up by staff or volunteers of a participating healthcare clinic or healthcare site. Low-income patients facing a chronic health issue can access the Healthy Foods Market while visiting the clinic. Patients then select produce to take home and use the produce to prepare along with meals for themselves and their families.

Patients are able to receive the nutritious food they need to help their health conditions at a place they already go — the healthcare clinic.

The Healthy Foods Market provides access to healthy food, especially fruits and vegetables, to individuals who are facing food insecurity and a chronic health issue. The Healthy Foods Market provides low-income individuals access to nutritious food that they may otherwise forego in order to afford medical care, including medication or other basic necessities like housing.

Health, Hunger, and our Healthy Foods Markets

Our state has some of the highest or worst hunger rates in the country according to Feeding America’s most recent release of Map the Meal Gap. Families struggling with poverty face a multitude of difficult choices. When you add the stress of a chronic health issue on top of hunger, low-income families face unexpected costs their budgets can’t absorb. Unpredictable costs for medications, co-pays, and other healthcare tests add up quickly, leaving less room for basic necessities including food. This means healthy and nutritious food options for low-income people struggling with health and hunger are simply not possible to buy at all. 

The latest Hunger in America report shows the link between health and hunger.  In New Mexico, the report shows that 50 percent of the households served by Roadrunner Food Bank have a member in the home with high blood pressure and another 33 percent have a member in the home with diabetes. When families don’t have enough food, hunger research shows that 75 percent of households we serve rely on inexpensive, lower quality food to feed their family. What all this boils down to: the health of our neighbors in need will suffer over time. And the longer hunger and health are an issue for a person, the more diet-related diseases become a reality.

The health of children in food insecure homes is impacted too. Children in low-incomes households are also likely to be in poorer health than their counterparts, and struggle to perform well in school. This impacts our kids and their lifelong aspirations.

For people and households experiencing a health issue and hunger simultaneously, our Healthy Foods Markets are a way we can insert nutritious food into their lives. Many healthcare clinics in the Albuquerque metro area are participating sites and have the program at their clinic twice a month. For the families who participate, the convenience is a time saver too. Patients are already visiting partner healthcare sites for regular and ongoing appointments for their health issue. Picking up nutritious food while visiting the clinic saves our neighbors in need time and money, because it saves them from having to arrange extra transportation, fuel costs, additional buses fares, and other resources.

Interested in Becoming a Partner Healthcare Clinic?

While many of our partner healthcare sites provide the program directly to patients of their clinic, please click here to find food assistance right in your area. If you are a healthcare clinic and would like to provide this service to your low-income patients, please complete this online form for future consideration and we’ll get back to you.

How You Can Help or Find Help

When you contribute to Roadrunner Food Bank, every dollar you give provides up to five meals for our hungry neighbors in need.  Plus, your contribution helps us source, acquire and distribute nutritious food. The Healthy Food Markets provide our neighbors facing hunger and a chronic health issue access to healthy food to create more well balanced and nutritious meals.