Medically Tailored Meal Kitchen
Good Bowls has been providing meals for the Medicaid Healthy Opportunities Pilot for the last two and a half years. Right when the program started, we became aware that many of the customers had specific dietary needs so we started to develop a medically tailored meal program to meet those needs.
Over the last two years we have developed recipes that are customized for various health conditions; we have meals that are kidney friendly, carb controlled, heart healthy, and high-calorie/high protein. We are one of only a few meal providers in the Cape Fear region of the Healthy Opportunities Pilot that provide medically tailored meals so this has become an important contribution to the HOP program.
To keep up with the demand we recently opened a dedicated kitchen to make medically tailored meals. Our staff of talented chefs work throughout the week to create recipes such as: Sweet Potato Breakfast Hash, Golden Panko Chicken, Korean Bulgogi Bliss and other flavors. We use locally sourced ingredients as much as possible to create dishes that are adapted to local taste preferences while meeting customers specific dietary needs.
One of the goals of the Healthy Opportunities Pilot is to support local producers and build the local economy. In addition to preparing all of our meals locally in the Triangle Area of North Carolina, we also work to source our ingredients from local farmers.
Our medically tailored meals kitchen in Pittsboro sources a portion of its vegetables from Farmer Food Share. Each week, a Farmer Food Share truck drops off a supply of fresh veggies and the staff gets busy washing, chopping, and roasting ingredients for the week’s order. This year we’ve served over 15,000 medically tailored meals and as demand continues to increase for our medically tailored meals, our partnership with Farmer Food Share grows as does our support of local farmers.
The Healthy Opportunity Pilot was launched in North Carolina to study whether providing non-medical interventions to high risk and underserved populations helped to achieve better health outcomes. After gathering data from 18 months of the pilot, a recent report says it is a resounding yes; it does work and people are healthier. Based on this finding, the Healthy Opportunities Pilot will now be going statewide. There were 33 counties that were served during the pilot phase and now the program is poised to expand statewide to serve all of North Carolina.
As the program rolls out, we will be applying to be a meal provider in a number of regions throughout the state. We expect our medically tailored meals to be an important part of this expansion . We’ll be hiring more chefs, developing new recipes, and upping our local produce order with Farmer Food Share to keep up with demand and keep the meals coming off the line.
