SMART Receives NY Health Foundation Grant

SMART is proud to announce that we are a recipient of the NY Health Foundation’s Healthy Food, Healthy Lives: Supporting a More Equitable Food System grant. With support from this grant, we have launched SMART Food for Life, a pilot project that will directly address the health of SMART women clients by linking those with Type II Diabetes (or who are pre-diabetic) to: a) nutritional counseling, b) the development of a medically tailored, culturally appropriate food plan, and c) the provision of prescribed food. By piloting this project in-house with a cohort of 12 current SMART clients, we aim to develop a replicable model to share with other non-profits and health clinics.

Cohort members have been meeting regularly with our partnered registered dietician Arielle Kestenbaum, MS, RD, CDN/Executive Director at Fare Meals, to develop a personalized food plan based on their unique medical needs. In addition to these one-on-one nutrition counseling sessions, cohort members have attended special in-person cooking classes led by Arielle and Sam Clare. The hands-on sessions feature recipes tailored to meet the dietary needs of people with diabetes, as well as providing valuable nutrition education and culinary skills instruction.

Through a partnership with Mt. Sinai’s Medicine Residency Program, we are fortunate to have Dr. Megha Srivastava as our medical expert and instructor for an informational series of diabetes classes. Dr. Srivastava, in consultation with Arielle, is also providing an individualized food prescription for each cohort member.

SMART is utilizing our current partnerships with food vendors such as Shop Healthy supermarkets, GrowNYC, Costco, and local farmers’ markets to help fill each member of the cohort's food prescription.