$50,000 micro grant will support physician-led initiative advancing solutions for community health across the United States
Lantern has been awarded $50,000 from the American Medical Association (AMA) Community Health Impact Lab micro grant to support the nationwide expansion of Lantern’s MEAL program to improve health outcomes and drive lasting change.
The grant will support expanding MEAL, which helped reduce food insecurity in the Denver pilot project. There are many programs, both national and local, to help families get the food they need, but many families aren’t participating. Often, they simply don’t know these programs exist or that they’re eligible. The project will now connect families across the country with federal programs such as WIC and SNAP, and will help families find local resources too, with the goal of reducing barriers to accessing food resources and helping families who face food insecurity.
“In our Denver pilot, 80% of survey respondents reported that our MEAL messages helped reduce their family’s food insecurity” said Dr. Katie Richardson, CEO of Lantern. “We are thrilled to take what we learned in that pilot and to develop a national program. Our hope is that this expansion helps thousands of families across the country.”
Funding will enable the initiative to:
- Develop a 6-month, rolling curriculum based on lessons learned from the pilot phase that will teach families about federal programs, local food finders, and share food skills education, recipes and offer support
- Expand to share timely information such as thanksgiving and holiday food distribution, summer meals information, and timely information on federal programs
The AMA launched the Community Health Impact Lab micro grants to support physician-led innovation that addresses social drivers of health and community health priorities through creative, promising solutions. The initiative invests in projects that have the potential to improve health outcomes while creating models that can inform efforts in other communities.
For more information about the MEAL program, visit MEAL Evaluation Report.