The Greek physician and father of medicine said it best. “Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food.”
There’s a reason he’s called the father of medicine. Hippocrates somehow knew over 2,000 years ago that illness had a physical and a rational explanation and that what we put into our bodies has huge implications for what we get out of them. Twenty-first century research is proving Hippocrates was right on the money.
Getty
Enter Ashley Tyrner of Farmbox Direct and now FarmboxRX. Tyrner has penned an unprecedented deal with Vibra Health of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania—the first insurance company to offer healthy fruit and vegetable boxes to its members, with an initial focus on seniors. In fact, the company is so sure that eating right can affect health outcomes, that they’re doing it for their Medicare Advantage members for free.
Through the FarmboxRX pilot program, Tyrner said she hopes to help revolutionize healthcare through healthy eating.
The daughter of an Illinois soy bean farmer who took an unintended and somewhat fortuitous route to New York City, Tyrner said she grew up with a love of agriculture. But it was being pregnant and on food stamps in California that led her to head to the other side of the country where she had dreamed of living and working since her girlhood.
Tyrner ended up moving into a four-flight walk-up in New York City with a three-month-old baby in tow. Initially she took a job in fashion. But her agricultural roots began to pull at her, when she realized that some 700,000 people in New York City and the Bronx live in a “food desert.” And she thought that if people could get coffee delivered to them in the middle of the night in the Big Apple, why not good food? (The USDA defines food deserts as parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables and other healthful whole foods.)
A subscription-based service that delivers fresh fruit and vegetables directly from organic farms, Farmbox Direct started out as a local delivery company with a zone from New York City to Brooklyn. In the beginning, Tyrner was her own main delivery person as she quickly realized that delivering boxes at 11 p.m. was par for the course when people didn’t show up for work.
So, again drawing on that good old midwestern wherewithal and ingenuity, Tyrner started to do her homework. Initially, she studied how far she could ship a box of produce while still keeping it fresh. That research grew Farmboxes reach up and down the eastern seaboard from Brooklyn. But Tyrner didn’t stop there. She began to study shipping logistics and how she could get a box to withstand three days of transit. Tyrner resolved that if she built a facility in Kansas City, Kansas, she could ship to the entire continental United States from there and still keep her produce fresh. And that’s exactly what she did.
Tyrner hand picks every farm and vendor her company uses. Her goal, she said, is to bring the Farmers Market in its purity to the front doors of her customers, a service she says is sorely needed by seniors. Farmbox offers three different size boxes, ranging in cost from $47.95 to $68.95. Patrons can get a mixed produce box, all fruit or all vegetables. Customers can to customize the deliveries and there are no commitments.
“I realized the way to eradicate the food desert problem in America and to truly make a dent in our health as a country needs to start at the doctor’s office and with the insurance providers. We have created a new category in this space that food is medicine,” she said. “We want to reverse the affects of chronic-related illness. Many doctors don’t say, ‘Take out red meat or add vegetables’ to their heart patients. They just put you on Lipitor. We are really creating a shift in our country.”
“Healthcare isn't just about healthcare anymore,” Tyrner said. “Health outcomes may often occur by the conditions in which we live, learn, work and play. Individuals with inadequate access to healthy foods are at a higher risk of developing chronic diseases. They also face increases in health care costs and services that might otherwise be avoidable.”
And food insecurity is a prevalent challenge among the senior population, she said. That means having limited access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy lifestyle. “Many seniors rely on fixed incomes, which impacts the affordability of fresh produce and healthy eating patterns,” Tyrner said. “Most often, elderly patients come home to empty kitchens and return to the hospital malnourished. By utilizing Farmbox Direct's farm-to-home subscription-based service, this project will impact members with diet-related illnesses by positively improving their nutrition and health outcomes with free boxes of life-saving produce.”
Tyrner went as far as to call food insecurity in the senior community “an epidemic in this country,” but she said it's even more pressing after older Americans return home after a hospital stay. “Many patients don't have food or support waiting for them back at home. America's elderly population is the sickest group on record and faces obstacles like chronic illnesses, unaddressed social and health issues from the 70s and 80s. The burden this group places on healthcare costs is staggering.”
Farmbox Direct will be educating recipients on the merits of each fruit and vegetable included in the box, and provide recipes by renowned chef Sam Kass. Kass served as Former President Barack Obama's Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition Policy, as executive director for Former First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign, and as an assistant chef at the White House. Later he worked as a senior food analyst for NBC News. Today he is an investor and strategist for healthier climate smart food with Acre and founder of Trove.
"The partnership between Vibra Health Plan and Farmbox Direct is the future of health," Kass said in a statement. "We are simply not eating enough fruit and vegetables, and this is especially true in low income and rural communities where access to healthy food is severely limited. This partnership to bring basic nutrition to those that need it most will impact the lives of countless people, significantly improve health outcomes, and reduce healthcare costs."
The initial rollout of FarmboxRX went into effect January 1 and is expected to reach Vibra Health Plan's Medicare-enrolled members in 33 counties in Pennsylvania. The company is headquartered in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The goal of the program is to provide 2,700 boxes a month, which can be customized to a patient's specific health needs and/or food allergies.
Tyrner said she is currently in talks with several national insurance companies, and Farmbox already has letters of intent from two additional national health plans for some 800,000 boxes beginning in 2021. Those companies plan to announce during the open enrollment period for Medicare in October, she said. Tyrner said she is also meeting with research universities across the country in hopes of doing independent studies on individuals with diabetes, renal failure, stroke and heart disease to measure the effects of Farmbox.
