Who We Are
Public Health Solutions helps underserved New Yorkers achieve optimal health and reach their full potential. Each year, we provide essential public health services—including food and nutrition support—to more than 135,000 people.
We operate New York State’s largest WIC program and manage all WIC vendors statewide. We also help over 50,000 New Yorkers enroll in or stay connected to SNAP, with average benefits of $491 per household and $182 per person.
Our expertise in connecting people to services led to our role as the WholeYouNYC social care network lead for Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Through this network, we are integrating Food is Medicine into Medicaid by partnering with more than 110 nutrition providers offering medically tailored meals and food prescriptions. We also support food and nutrition services for people living with HIV/AIDS through the Ryan White Program.
Founded in 1957, PHS has a long history of delivering evidence-based public health interventions, including Food is Medicine.
How We Think of Food is Medicine
Food is Medicine is one of the essential tools to advance health equity and close the gaps we see in life expectancy and other health outcomes in our city. We see it as a nexus of services and programs addressing the link between nutrition and health. What is so powerful about Food is Medicine is the breadth of clinical conditions it can address as well as stages of life it can impact. As a public health organization, we aim to target strategies upstream as much as possible—supporting access, early intervention, and disease prevention.
How We Put Food is Medicine Into Action
As part of our contracting and administrative services, PHS supports the NYC Health Department’s administration of the Ryan White Part A (RWPA)-funded food and nutrition services (FNS) to RWPA-eligible individuals throughout the five boroughs of New York City. As part of this FNS program, some notable services include nutrition education and counseling and home-delivered meals to clients living with HIV/AIDS up to twice a week. The food and nutrition services include intake assessments, comprehensive nutrition assessments, reassessments, sessions of nutritional counseling, nutrition education groups, and medically tailored home-delivered meals and hygiene kits.
Through our WholeYouNYC initiative, we are expanding access to Food is Medicine interventions for Medicaid members and other underserved communities in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Over three years, we have scaled medically tailored meals, food prescriptions, and nutrition counseling for populations with specialized needs, such as pregnant and newly parenting individuals and those with nutrition-sensitive chronic conditions. This work builds on seven years of success growing community access through our Food and Nutrition Services Bundle in partnership with NYC Health + Hospitals.
Finally, PHS also supports healthy eating through SNAP and WIC. Across nine sites, we serve over 30,000 WIC participants, with more than 90% actively using their benefits each month.
How We’re Funded and How the Future Looks
Food as Medicine in the form of Ryan White Part A food and nutrition services is funded by the federal government by grants to New York City. The city then contracts with PHS to contract with community-based organizations who have expertise in the community and with the concept of Food is Medicine.
The population served through food and nutrition services is quite limited. To broaden the reach of Food is Medicine, we are aiming to build Food is Medicine into the whole Medicaid program. We’re optimistic about Food is Medicine’s preventive power to ensure sustainability. The growing evidence base, in terms of both clinical outcomes and cost, makes Food is Medicine a strong contender to survive shifting political winds. PHS has long been a provider of WIC and WIC Vendor Management, including ensuring stores are adequately stocked with fresh produce and nutritious foods. We have about 2,900 active WIC vendors. We see WIC as setting a precedent for a newer and more powerful movement in nutrition that can be adjusted to meet local needs, and therefore broadly popular.
Which Metrics and Outcomes We Track
We focus on access. This means how many more people will receive FIM as a result of our work. But it also means looking at whether people with nutritionally sensitive conditions are receiving FIM; are we able to create access for the most vulnerable and underserved; and are we maximizing upstream opportunities like maternal health, infancy, and childhood? A critical element is to be able to connect people with needs we identify through screening with the delivery of an intervention.
Our 2019 pilot study explored some of these aspects.
We have extensive Medicaid data that allows us to look at these populations in detail. This data provides us with unique insight into chronic conditions that may exacerbate, or be exacerbated by, nutrition-related conditions and other potential social needs that play a vital role in Food is Medicine. For example, information about housing status and quality helps us identify needs unique to those in temporary housing (or who are unhoused), such as not having access to kitchens or microwaves.
We also gather community feedback through surveys of our programs, including WIC. We take the opportunity to understand whether community members can find the food they need when they need it, how satisfied they are with the nutrition support they receive, and whether the support and resources fulfilled their needs.
Obtaining accurate demographic data has been a challenge. Ideally, we would have essential safety net programs to best understand how and to what degree food and nutrition gaps are truly filled through these programs and resources. Additionally, the most challenging aspect of tracking is connecting the impact of these resources to long-term health and social impact.
Lessons Learned
People come first: Culture, religion, and personal food preferences shape program success. We also saw how social and economic realities such as housing instability, limited refrigeration, mental health needs, and aging directly affect engagement and outcomes.
Trust drives the work: Building a shared network in a resource-limited environment relies on communication, respect, and collaboration. Recognizing diverse organizational strengths is essential.
Clinical models must reflect real life: We learned that understanding readiness, priorities, and behavioral cues is key to translating access into action. Training our social care navigators in approaches like motivational interviewing helped us meet people where they are in a city as diverse as New York.
Why We Want to Keep Providing Food is Medicine
Our Food is Medicine work has deeply enriched our organization’s mission and impact, allowing us to merge public health and community support in impactful ways.
Consider John, one of PHS’ clients, a patient at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx, who was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. John and his wife struggled to put food on the table while he was unable to work. They sought PHS support to enroll in SNAP for supplemental nutrition support.
During the screening, we learned John’s wife was working a few hours a week in the evenings while caring for him full-time. Together, we secured $353 per month in SNAP benefits to relieve immediate food pressures.
We also identified that John qualified for medically tailored, home-delivered meals, a service new to the family. Through our partner God’s Love We Deliver, John began receiving three nutritious meals a day during his chemotherapy, helping him focus on recovery rather than food insecurity.
This story illustrates the power of combining Food is Medicine interventions with broader food assistance, and the importance of assessing the needs of entire households to improve health outcomes.