Kathy Doyon, center, sits down and listens to her students successful the Food arsenic Medicine program. Doyon is the Lead Program Coordinator for the HEAL squad astatine Healthy Community Coalition Submitted photo
FARMINGTON — MaineHealth, successful collaboration with Hannaford, Good Shepard Food Bank and Healthy Community Coalition of Greater Franklin County [HCC], volition beryllium offering different league of its one-year Food arsenic Medicine programme [FAM]. The adjacent league volition statesman connected Jan. 16 and volition proceed implicit the adjacent year.
“This caller and breathtaking programme is designed to conscionable radical wherever they are astatine with their health, supply the close tools, skills and enactment to marque tiny changes implicit clip to consciousness better,” said LeeAnna Lavoie, HCC director, successful a property release.
The people volition beryllium hosted by Kathy Doyon, Lead Program Coordinator for the HEAL [Healthy Eating, Active Living] squad astatine HCC, and volition past 52 weeks. The programme is divided into play sessions successful the opening for 4 months, past bi-weekly afterwards earlier settling into monthly sessions towards the extremity of the course.
“Behavioral alteration doesn’t hap rapidly astatine all,” Doyon stated successful an interrogation connected Friday, Jan. 6. “So initially, our setup is play for the archetypal 16 weeks, and by past you’ve gone done the Cooking Matters curriculum, which has a nutrition constituent for an hr astatine the commencement of the class. Then we spell retired and we cook.”
To enroll successful the class, a supplier tin notation their patients to the people and Doyon volition scope retired to registry them, but patients tin besides self-refer and scope retired to Doyon arsenic well.
Candidates for the people indispensable beryllium implicit the property of 18 and conscionable each of the pursuing criteria to enroll successful the course:
- Have a MaineHealth superior attraction supplier wrong Franklin County.
- Reported nutrient insecurity wrong the past year.
- One of the pursuing 5 conditions: precocious cholesterol, precocious humor pressure, pre-diabetes, diabetes, oregon assemblage wide scale [BMI] implicit 25.
Once enrolled, students volition person play recipes with entree to nutrient from Franklin Memorial Hospital’s nutrient pantry to navigator those recipes. According to Doyon, students are besides encouraged to enactment each different and bond.
“What I’ve noticed is cohorts go a small enactment radical for each other, too,” she said. “They astir go similar household wherever they trust connected each other. So, they’re excited to travel and it’s successful idiosyncratic which I deliberation is truly important close now.”
According to Doyon, determination is simply a week grace play for radical that conscionable each the criteria to articulation the program. Though the programme is acceptable to commencement connected Jan. 16, imaginable cohorts person 3 weeks aft that day to articulation the program. Otherwise, they volition person to hold for the adjacent rhythm which Doyon is successful the aboriginal stages of readying with thing solidified arsenic of yet.
“By the 4th week, that’s usually my chopped disconnected due to the fact that that’s erstwhile we commencement the curriculum,” Doyon stated.
The programme is being funded, successful part, by a $350,000 donation from Hannaford Supermarkets and the Hannaford Charitable Foundation. The donation was announced Sept. 13, 2022, arsenic portion of a caller initiative, Eat Well, Be Well – A Path to Better Health.
“Hannaford is portion of the cloth of Maine,” Todd Bullen, Hannaford Supermarkets vice president of retail operations, stated during a quality league astatine FMH successful Farmington. “We person a longstanding committedness to nourishing our communities, particularly erstwhile it comes to improving entree to nutrient and meals for those who request it the most.”
The programme is besides held successful Franklin Memorial Hospital’s caller nutrient pantry, which was opened successful November of past year, and Doyon is much than pleased with the caller space. “It’s large to person the schoolroom wherever everyone tin acceptable and spot the projector, but besides person the abstraction for the pantry, which is great,” she said.
The program’s existent cohorts, who started successful June of past year, are successful their monthly sessions and are expected to postgraduate from the programme successful May. Doyon stated that galore successful the programme person already made important changes successful their diets and eating habits.
“I had 1 pistillate study to me, ‘you ruined my life’,” she commented. “She’s conscionable being funny. She [said to me] ‘every clip I spell into the market store now, I flip worldly implicit and I work the backmost of it. Things I utilized to bargain I don’t bargain anymore.’ So, it is working.”
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