Policy Shifts
Enabling policy shifts for transformative change by the health sector, exploring the many facets of food for health.
Bringing Indigenous Foodways into Health Care
Since inception, Nourish has been deeply committed to advancing reconciliation. Our focus has been to build understanding ofIndigenous food cultures, ways of knowing, and being. By highlighting the impact of colonization on Indigenous foodways and their importance to well-being, we aim to help dismantle racist and colonial systems that perpetuate harm against Indigenous communities.
Our 2024 field scan highlights practitioners advancing Indigenous foodways in health care and explores interconnected barriers that continue to obstruct widespread uptake and strategies to overcome them.
Food Prescribing, A Promising Health Strategy
Food prescribing is emerging as a promising health strategy to improve population health by reducing the impacts of food insecurity on health and pressures on the health care system.
Our 2024 field scan surveys food prescribing models to date in Canada, exploring the enabling conditions, policies, and redesigns needed to scale food prescribing from niche pilots to a funded health program that can generate impacts for the health of individuals and systems.
Taking a Bite Out of Emissions, Climate Action Through Food
Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. If the health care sector were a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter globally. Working towards net zero health care is a challenge we need to meet, and reducing food-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) is a way all health care providers can take action.
Nourish is collaborating with a growing number of partners and organizations to prioritize food-related GHG reductions as a core strategy of net zero health care efforts in Canadian health care.
“The intersection of environment and health is a powerful sweet spot where our efforts can yield outsized positive impacts on our lives now and into the future.”
~ Dr. Courtney Howard, Emergency Physician and Vice-Chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance
Why Policy Shifts Are Needed
94
Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
23%
of Canadian families experience food insecurity
1/3
GHG emissions stem from food systems
