Health and Fitness

Jan 29 2008

Farmers Fill Kaiser Permanente Patients' Plates

Kaiser Permanente's relationships with small farms are growing as the organization works to fill thousands of patient meals with fresh, locally grown produce.

For organic food pioneers within Kaiser Permanente such as Preston Maring, MD, and nutrition services Director Jan Sanders, that means talking directly to farmers about their operations and the roles Kaiser Permanente can play in supporting sustainable agriculture. That work recently took Sanders and Dr. Maring to the Capay Valley region of Northern California, where dozens of organic farmers have concentrated and taken root.

Dr. Maring, who founded Kaiser Permanente's farmers' market program in 2003 at Oakland Medical Center, uses farm visits to better understand what farmers need as they work with an organization of Kaiser Permanente's size and scope. Through the leadership of Dr. Maring and of Sanders – who represents Kaiser Permanente's national Procurement and Supply organization – Kaiser Permanente purchased more than 60 tons of fresh, locally sourced produce in California for patient meals in 2007 alone.

Find out more about their work, and about farmers working closely with Kaiser Permanente, through this narrated slideshow (Flash).

To learn more about Kaiser Permanente's efforts in this area, visit Dr. Maring's Farmers' Market and Recipe Update website.