Food as Medicine: Reimagining Pediatric Health Beyond the Doctor’s Office Recap
On Friday, December 12, 2025, the webinar Food as Medicine: Reimagining Pediatric Health Beyond the Doctor’s Office, convened experts to discuss the role of nutrition in public health. The conversation highlighted the need to treat food as medicine and addressed urgent challenges, including recent cuts to federal food programs.
Candace Burton, TBF’s Senior Program Officer, Support for the Social Safety Net, opened the webinar, speaking about how recent federal actions "have reduced benefits and funding for programs connecting schools and childcare centers with local farmers,” citing the $1 billion reduction in funding for federal food programs. Despite these cuts, The Boston Foundation’s Meeting the Moment: Sustaining Families initiative has distributed $3.4 million to nonprofit organizations fighting food insecurity.
Burton then turned things over to Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, Cardiologist, Public Health Scientist, and Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who delivered an overview of the nutrition crisis in the United States. He discussed the economic and health burdens of poor nutrition, citing the alarming statistics that “poor nutrition is directly estimated to kill 10,000 Americans, cause 16,000 new cases of diabetes and cause 1,500 new cancers” per year. Dr. Mozaffarian shared that poor nutrition is also harming our economy, with an estimated loss of $1.1 trillion each year in healthcare spending. He advocated for the Food Is Medicine approach, which involves increasing the intake of nutrient-rich foods such as fruits, nuts, fish, vegetables, plant oils, whole grains, beans, and yogurt.
Danubia Camargos Silva, Senior Program Officer, Child Well-Being at the Boston Foundation, then came on to introduce the panelists: Lauren Fiechtner, M.D., M.P.H., Director of Nutrition at Mass General Brigham for Children and Senior Health and Research Advisor at the Greater Boston Food Bank; Brian Hillmer, Chief Culinary Officer at Community Servings; Tracy Skelly, Founder of Little Cocoa Bean Co.; and Pat Spence, President and CEO of the Urban Farming Institute.
Candace Burton, TBF’s Senior Program Officer, Support for the Social Safety Net, opened the webinar, speaking about how recent federal actions "have reduced benefits and funding for programs connecting schools and childcare centers with local farmers,” citing the $1 billion reduction in funding for federal food programs. Despite these cuts, The Boston Foundation’s Meeting the Moment: Sustaining Families initiative has distributed $3.4 million to nonprofit organizations fighting food insecurity.
Burton then turned things over to Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, Cardiologist, Public Health Scientist, and Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who delivered an overview of the nutrition crisis in the United States. He discussed the economic and health burdens of poor nutrition, citing the alarming statistics that “poor nutrition is directly estimated to kill 10,000 Americans, cause 16,000 new cases of diabetes and cause 1,500 new cancers” per year. Dr. Mozaffarian shared that poor nutrition is also harming our economy, with an estimated loss of $1.1 trillion each year in healthcare spending. He advocated for the Food Is Medicine approach, which involves increasing the intake of nutrient-rich foods such as fruits, nuts, fish, vegetables, plant oils, whole grains, beans, and yogurt.
Danubia Camargos Silva, Senior Program Officer, Child Well-Being at the Boston Foundation, then came on to introduce the panelists: Lauren Fiechtner, M.D., M.P.H., Director of Nutrition at Mass General Brigham for Children and Senior Health and Research Advisor at the Greater Boston Food Bank; Brian Hillmer, Chief Culinary Officer at Community Servings; Tracy Skelly, Founder of Little Cocoa Bean Co.; and Pat Spence, President and CEO of the Urban Farming Institute.
AGENDA
Welcome
Candace Burton, Senior Program Officer, Support for the Social Safety Net, The Boston Foundation
Keynote
Dariush Mozaffarian, Cardiologist; Public Health Scientist; Director, Food Is Medicine Institute, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University
Panel Discussion
Lauren Fiechtner, M.D., M.P.H., Director of Nutrition, Mass General Brigham for Children and Senior Health; Research Advisor, Greater Boston Food Bank
Brian Hillmer, Chief Culinary Officer, Community Servings
Tracy Skelly, Founder, Little Cocoa Bean Co.
Pat Spence, President and CEO, Urban Farming Institute
Moderator: Danubia Camargos Silva, Senior Program Officer, Child Well-Being, The Boston Foundation
The panel addressed common stereotypes that harm food-insecure families. Skelly countered the misconception that food-insecure parents are "too lazy to cook,” sharing that good nutrition is "not always accessible, it's not always culturally relevant, and it's not always easy to implement, especially for overwhelmed caregivers.” Skelly shared how she works with parents by affirming their efforts. “We start from a place of affirming the choices they're making. ‘You’re a great parent, you’re a loving parent. You love your child. You want moments of joy around feeding and food for your child’, and then we start to make certain alterations or suggestions.”
Panelists focused on strategies to promote nutrition through a cultural lens. Pat Spence from the Urban farming Institute, emphasized the organization’s focus on growing culturally specific foods. “So first, our mission is to develop and promote urban agriculture, to engage all of our residents and grow food and build a healthy community,” Spence said. “To connect people with obtaining that fresh food is through culture. So we are growing the food that our community is looking for.” This includes produce such as okra, collard greens, and callaloo.
For Brian Hillmer of Community Servings, the service goes even further down the path of addressing medical needs. He explained that Community Servings provides two interventions: "medically tailored meals, but also medically tailored groceries," intended for individuals with comorbidities. The support helps clients by "recalibrating a person's palate expectations, recalibrating portion size expectations, recalibrating plate compositions," often introducing them to ingredients like quinoa or asparagus for the first time.
Dr. Fiechtner highlighted the need for the health system to aid in nutrition education. “We need connections to community resources in order to really robustly support these families who are in this vulnerable time,” she said. “A health system has to invest in the community health workers and the dieticians that are potentially part of these programs in order to make this really work.”
Across these dimensions, from supporting parents, to supplying culturally relevant and healthy foods, to tailoring food to medical conditions, to investing in systems that support health and nutrition, the panelists acknowledged we are just beginning our work. Closing the forum, Danubia Camargos Silva shared her faith that we can get there, if we lean into our collective ability to "imagine systems that were never built for everyone, and we build them so that they are.”
Panelists focused on strategies to promote nutrition through a cultural lens. Pat Spence from the Urban farming Institute, emphasized the organization’s focus on growing culturally specific foods. “So first, our mission is to develop and promote urban agriculture, to engage all of our residents and grow food and build a healthy community,” Spence said. “To connect people with obtaining that fresh food is through culture. So we are growing the food that our community is looking for.” This includes produce such as okra, collard greens, and callaloo.
For Brian Hillmer of Community Servings, the service goes even further down the path of addressing medical needs. He explained that Community Servings provides two interventions: "medically tailored meals, but also medically tailored groceries," intended for individuals with comorbidities. The support helps clients by "recalibrating a person's palate expectations, recalibrating portion size expectations, recalibrating plate compositions," often introducing them to ingredients like quinoa or asparagus for the first time.
Dr. Fiechtner highlighted the need for the health system to aid in nutrition education. “We need connections to community resources in order to really robustly support these families who are in this vulnerable time,” she said. “A health system has to invest in the community health workers and the dieticians that are potentially part of these programs in order to make this really work.”
Across these dimensions, from supporting parents, to supplying culturally relevant and healthy foods, to tailoring food to medical conditions, to investing in systems that support health and nutrition, the panelists acknowledged we are just beginning our work. Closing the forum, Danubia Camargos Silva shared her faith that we can get there, if we lean into our collective ability to "imagine systems that were never built for everyone, and we build them so that they are.”